


beneath the waves

by starforged



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Language, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I Guess I Lied About Only One Queen, In Which the North Yeets Foreign Rule, Long Live Queen Daenerys, Minor Gendrya, Minor Gilly/Samwell Tarly, No Other Queen but the Queen in the North Whose Name is Stark, Post-War, Queen Yara Greyjoy of the Salt Throne, Sansa Plays the Game of Thrones and Wins Y'all, Spoilers, Theon Greyjoy Lives, Three Queens, minor Jonerys, pending tags to come upon further chapters, slow burn hell, three heads of the dragon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2020-03-08 05:36:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18888226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starforged/pseuds/starforged
Summary: Theon Greyjoy deserved a good death, with the Drowned God and his ancestors:but the wolf howls louder than the sea.Or, how Theon and Sansa put the North back together again.





	1. Chapter 1

He was barely alive when they came for his body, almost mistaken for dead. His eyes were open, glossy, as though the light had gone already. Sansa had seen plenty of bodies to know that look. 

But there was no mistaking the slight lift of his chest when she pressed a hand to it. She wasn't going to cry. Not here, in front of others. She wasn't afraid of her tears, but she did worry about whether or not she could stop once it started. Her breath hitched. 

She was imagining it. Grief could do so many things to a person, warp their perceptions of the world around them. Theon had died when the Night King's sword had pierced his body.

But there it was again, her palm just barely going up, down, as if with a staggered breath.

Sansa pressed her ear to his chest, carefully, gently, because if what she thought she saw was _real_ , Theon would be so close to death. Anything could sever that thread.

Her cheek lay against his chest. Her ear hovered over his heart.

Hope was a double edged sword, and letting hers rise was silly and foolish. But there it was, as faint as the fluttering of a baby bird's wings: a heartbeat.

Theon Greyjoy was alive.

“Help!” she called out, lifting her head and springing to her feet. Her heart raced, joy and fear and worry intermingled in a dangerous concoction. 

Heads turned her way, wary and exhausted.

Theon Greyjoy was alive, but not for long if they weren't quick.

\--

In between that state of dark and light, the muddied grey of death reaching its claws out and dragging its prey home with it, Theon dreamed. He dreamed of the Ironborn and the scraggly salt islands he had called home when he was so small. The Drowned God loomed over him, the sea dripping on his face. It was an honor to die in the sea, but he remembered the snow and the cold and knew he had died far from the sea. His god was not here in the North.

He reached out a hand to the god, fingers twitching, desperate to grasp onto something familiar. The crags of his face were deep and reminded him of the cliffs of Pyke, skin rolling waves of blue and gray. His face was his father’s and the distant memory of his grandfather’s. It was his mother and Yara, hard around the mouth and salt on the tongue.

He was the son of iron, the god seemed to say. He let himself relax, reaching for the darkness beyond. He was ready; he had done what he could to redeem himself, for Yara, for Bran, for Sansa. He had died a good man, fighting for the future of the world. It was time to rest.

But the howls of wolves behind him seemed to startle his vision of the Drowned God. 

Theon dreamed of the sea, but winter was calling him home, and when he turned to the sound, his god disappeared. There was nowhere to go but back.

The crackling of the firewood popping was the first thing that he heard, as if his ears had been closed up until this moment. He remembered fire in the Godswood. Was he still there? The ground was softer than he imagined it could have possibly been, but there was a searing pain that tore through his body with each subtle and minute movement of his body. It was the shift of his chest as he breathed, the wiggle of toes, the stretch of his dry lips, splitting them open.

There’s something in his hand, his fingers carefully wrapped around it. Slim and warm, he pressed it into his palm to feel it out. It was sharp and jagged, long. With effort, he brought his arm up, ignoring the way his body demanded that he keep still as death. 

A direwolf stared back at him. A pin, a Stark emblem. His fingers curled delicately around the gift again, his breath shaky. His arm dropped, unable to hold the strength to keep up any longer. The thud was more jarring than anything, and he hissed.

When he had first undergone Ramsay’s knives, Theon had begged for the pain to end. Pain was life, and he didn’t want to endure that any longer. He was broken, no longer even a man, and fear hobbled him even more than the wounds did. 

It was strange now how he clung to the pain, a tether to the living world that he didn’t even deserve.

A shadow moved over him, and then the soft perfume he had grown to recognize even in his dreams. Her red hair was pulled back, but not as severely as if she were entertaining guests. Theon suspected that meant the queen had moved on, or that too many had died. Or perhaps he was in a place where traitors deserved to go and Sansa Stark would rightly hold the keys to his torture. Dark circles marred her pale face, as if she hadn’t had any sleep for days.

Her hand was gentle on his shoulder. “You’re awake,” and she sounded surprised by her own words. 

His lips parted, and he tasted the harsh copper of his own blood. A croak answered her in return. His throat was a desert, all sun and no relief.

Her hand was gone. She held a glass of water to his lips, and the lukewarm liquid was heaven against his mouth, an oasis down his throat. All the while, he kept his gaze on her, the coolness of her face but the crease of her lips where she gave a concerned frown. The twitch of an eyebrow when she noticed him looking at her. Her eyes were more gentle that her stern facade, the deep blue of the ocean in a summer day.

“You almost met with the pyre,” Sansa told him. 

He closed his eyes. He should have died, but he can’t say that to her. Bran had given him a hero’s end, the parting words that would have left his soul just that much more unmarred. He couldn’t even do that correctly.

“Do you want more water?”

Theon nodded and opens his eyes again. He took another slow sip.

“Bran is alright,” she continued. “You kept your promise.”

Her voice was so soft, and his eyes burned, the bitter pinprick of tears threatening to overwhelm his body.

“Arya killed the Night King.” The glass made a clink against the table next to the bed, and Sansa returned to the chair next to his bed. How long had she been there? Hours, days?

No, it would have been too ridiculous for anyone to believe that Sansa Stark would set up a vigil at Theon Greyjoy’s side. He didn’t deserve that.

So he focused on what she was telling him instead, letting the words mull over in his brain. Little Arya, who had more in common with him and Robb than with her lady mother and lady sister. Little Arya, whom he had seen grow up, a small baby into a wiry tomboy into - he had seen her, in glimpses. She was a phantom. He’d heard stories, picked up the roads she had traveled from rumors and gossip and Sansa herself. His little sister had saved the world.

He allowed himself the shakiest of smiles, blinking away tears.

“You’ve been in this bed for a month.”

A month in that cold, grey place that had no beginning and no end. 

He lifted his hand with the Stark pin in it. “Yours?”

Theon didn’t even recognize the rasp of voice that came from him. It was the scratch of tree branches during winter brushing against each other. It was the sound the hounds’ nails made digging into the ground when they were hungry.

Sansa blinked when he spoke. Her hand came to cover his, fingers over the pin. Fingers almost tangled up with his. “It’s yours.”

Theon didn’t remember falling back to sleep, but he remembered the warmth and softness of Sansa’s hand as the pain pulled him back.


	2. Chapter 2

When she was a girl, Sansa had no trouble making friends. She was sweet and charming, the perfect ideal of a lady. But time and circumstances had chiseled those features into something more. She was sharper, and being sharper meant that she knew she had to be more aware, more cautious. And friends were harder.

Maybe part of it was that she had so few opportunities to meet people. Survival had been priority for so long that she wondered when her mind and her body would catch up with reality and she would collapse under it. Marriage to Tyrion, Joffrey, Littlefinger, the cruelties of her aunt and Cersei, the girl that envied Sansa's place in Ramsay's bed. They had been like the sand against glass, trying to smooth her out and warp her.

It was just too bad that she was not glass, and they gave her edges.

In a different world, she believed that her and Daenerys could have been friends. In a different world, she would have been a princess in a keep and Sansa would have run her fingers through hair like the snow of Winterfell. They would have gossiped about boys. They would giggle about Jon and Robb and Theon, about Rhaegar and his children and whether or not Sansa could be queen.

She saw all of this, a different world in a different time.

That was not this world.

In this one, Sansa did not have any true friends. She couldn’t trust anyone long enough to allow them in, to express her thoughts and feelings and expose herself in a way that could have been dangerous. She had her family, of course, but Bran was not someone she could talk to, and Arya had left without a word around the same time as Jon did.

And Jon…

He never listened to her. 

She pinched the bridge of her nose, resting a hip against one of the rails on a walkway overlooking the courtyard. Winter was still here, the North was laid bare and fractured, great Houses nothing but the whistle of wind now. Food was still stretched thin, her home was a little worse for wear than it had been, and a foreign queen was trying to take Westeros. 

She had received a raven earlier that morning, from the far corners of Pyke, scrawled in Yara Greyjoy’s messy hand. Demands for her brother’s wellbeing, his life, whether the weather of Winterfell was really ideal for him to heal. 

Sam said that Theon was stable enough now to travel home, should they take it slow and easy. 

Sansa had wanted to scream. This _was_ his home, where Theon had grown up and where Theon had been reborn again. But she bit it back, realizing with a soft embarrassment that he wasn’t her prisoner. She would never hold him back out of some selfish wish. She had so few people to trust, and he was one of them. 

A friend.

She placed her hands on her elbows, holding her arms close to her body. 

“Lady Sansa.” Brienne always said her name as if afraid it was entirely wrong, quietly until the very end, and then it was through her nose.

“What is it?” She had to make sure that her voice was even and tempered. Not because Brienne had interrupted anything in particular, but she hated being caught unaware when she was in a melancholy state. 

Sansa wasn’t sure if Brienne could be considered a friend, but she did see her as family, an extension of her lady mother’s love. Brienne was rough around the edges, uncertain of her place in a man’s world, but she wore her armor and her title proud, and she swung her sword better than anyone else Sansa had met. 

Not that she was dumb enough to say that out loud to anyone else.

She owed Brienne so many things, and she didn’t deserve any false ire after everything.

Brienne didn’t even blink. “Lord Royce and his men have left for the Eyrie.”

Sansa nodded. “He informed me of those plans last night.”

“And the Wildlings have gone to the Wall with that - Tormund.” Even when she said his name, it looked as though Brienne had swallowed sour milk, and Sansa couldn't help the slight smile that slipped onto her face.

“And to think, you couldn't have even said his name without getting sick.” A teasing lilt couldn't help but thread it's way into her voice. 

She was rewarded with a glower for her efforts. A friend, but mostly a protector, and beyond that - family. Brienne of Tarth wasn't born into winter, but she had embraced it as well as anyone southern could.

Brienne sniffed before she mustered up enough energy for an answer. “He is brave, if stupid.”

“I think you and I can both agree that is most of the men we have met," Sansa said. She wanted to make it another joke, but her words came out soft. 

Jaime Lannister had left, and while she would never shed a tear at his departure, she tolerated him for Brienne's sake. Love was a strange thing, a fragile bird that lived in your chest and suffocated with a breath. And when it died, the world lost something you never quite knew was there.

Sansa had never been truly in love with Joffrey, but she thought she had been. She clung to the sweet ideal of living in a song, and he had destroyed it with her father's death. Sansa had never been truly in love with anyone, and she was happier that way. 

Brienne had been. There had been the briefest glint of starlight in her eyes when she asked Sansa if Jaime would be allowed to stay. She agreed. 

Brienne nodded stiffly. "They choose their own fates."

Sansa started to walk past her, a hand resting briefly on her arm. 

"Are you alright, Lady Sansa?"

"I should be extending that courtesy towards you, not the other way around."

When Brienne didn't reply, she bit back a sigh and gave her a tired smile. "There is much to be done, Ser Brienne. People to home, Winterfell to rebuild, and Theon is just on this side of holding on. That's all."

Boring lady work. There was nothing to see her, and she certainly wasn't going to admit the bitter tinge of loneliness that gripped her.

\--

At the end of the day, night coloring the sky, Sansa found her way into Theon's chambers, a tray in her hands. A servant could have done this, but she needed the quiet and she needed a friend.

And she needed to share with him his sister’s letter.

He was sitting up, looking small and frail amongst the pillows and stark red bedspread that draped over his lap. He was still pale, the circles under his eyes so dark. She knew that he was stable, healing, but seeing him like this made her worry. It made her think of a man named Reek.

He turned to look at her as she quietly entered the room, from her face to her hands. A wan smile crossed his lips, and he ran a hand through his limp dirty blonde hair. “Shouldn’t you be entertaining in the dining hall?”

“I’ve decided to take the night off,” she said, placing the tray down on the table next to the bed. “It’s not much, but I was able to get you a little extra meat in your stew.” It was at the expense of her own meal, but she was healthy. Theon was dead. 

A growl filled the quiet air between the two of them, a low grumble only slightly muffled by the bedspread. Theon made a face. “You didn’t have to do that.”

She shot him a look, brows raised high as she looked down at him. Then she smoothed out her skirts and took a seat in the chair that had been a constant companion to his bed. There was no arguing with that look. It was Cersei’s, perfectly copied down to the tic in her mouth. Who could argue with Cersei Lannister and claim to be a winner?

Even if it had been a pale imitation, she knew that Theon would simply be quiet and accept his meal. Whether that was because he was weak or because she was Sansa Stark or because the last bits of Reek clung to him like a scab wasn’t apparent. 

“You’ve been too kind,” he murmured, taking the stew bowl and holding it with shaking hands. 

“I’ve been as kind as I’m meant to,” she argued. “Put aside us, and you still have what you did on the Long Night. You still have a home here.”

Instead of replying, he busied himself with eating, slow, so very slow. It was painful to watch. She picked at lint on her skirt. 

“Your sister wrote.”

“Is she okay?” She couldn’t help but hear the thread of panic that tinged his voice. 

Sansa nodded. “She wrote that she was preparing the few ships she still had for the queen’s use.”

He stared at her for a moment, and she wondered if that would even begin to ease his worries. Deep wrinkles had burrowed their way into his forehead. And then his lips curled into a smile, and there was a vaguely pained and wheezing sound that she could assume was a laugh. 

“You say that word like it’s a knife to the heart.”

Her lips parted, nostrils flaring as she breathed out. She was allowing too much of herself to relax, but if not with Theon, then with who? They had already seen the deepest, ugliest truths about each other. 

“I’ve been quite assured that she will make a great ruler.”

He nodded, bringing the spoon to the bowl again. “I feel reassured.”

Pressing her lips together, she fought the urge to roll her eyes. Childish. But it did feel good, for the both of them to joke at the expense of her uncertainties. 

“Your sister also ordered me to send you home.”

“Ah.” He looked torn, as if this news could hurt him as much as a sword to the belly had. 

“Sam said you could travel, and we can have a boat ready for you--”

He cut her off. “You said so yourself, she won’t be there even if I did return to Pyke to heal.”

“There’s still another war to be won,” Sansa agreed.

She watched his trembling hand lift the spoon, broth slipping over the edges of the metal. He didn’t quite make it to his mouth, as if his hand decided to quit working all of a sudden. She watched the spoon, the broth, the meat fall. He cursed in frustration, chin trembling, lips trembling. 

When she was a girl and he was a boy, he had been strong. As strong as Robb and Jon. And they had all been weakened in some way, broken and bent and fallen. 

“Here,” she said softly, taking the spoon from his fingers. He stared at their hands, at the way her fingers brushed against his, and then she was dipping the spoon into his bowl. Lifting it again. Bringing it to his mouth.

“Sansa,” he warned.

“You’re injured. I promise not to tell another soul that I fed you dinner.” She gave him that Look again, watching him crumble beneath of it.

His lips parted, and he ate. 

“I don’t want to go back to Pyke. I’m - home. Here. If that’s alright.”

There was relief in hearing those words, as if she had been holding herself so tense at the idea of another person leaving her. Even if it was for now, temporary until he was healthy again, she would not be alone. 

“This is your home,” Sansa told him. “You belong here, Theon. You are free to come and go and stay as long as you wish. Now open up and eat the food I had prepared for you.”


	3. Chapter 3

“King’s Landing is gone.”

Sansa sat in the middle of the long table. It used to be Jon’s place, elected King of the North by men who thought a male Stark was a better fit. And there wasn’t a bitterness to that thought, but a resigned sigh. He had the power and title for all of a breath before giving it away. Sansa wouldn’t have been so quick to bend the knee. 

But now she sat where she knew she belonged, with Bran to her right and a pinker-in-the-face Theon on her left. 

Sansa did not pause in her sip of wine, though she wanted to flinch away from her brother’s voice speaking louder than the low buzz of the dining folk in her hall. They fell silent, except for the clatter of silverware or the coughs of those who had inhaled too sharply on food or drink. Heads turned their way, eyes on her, on Bran. 

Theon hissed in pain as he leaned forward, past her, to her brother. “What did you say?”

Bran blinked, slow and leisurely as though he did it simply to keep up the appearance of being a human in a Stark body. The turn of his head was even slower, and she had to wonder if it perhaps just wasn’t a tad bit on the dramatic side.

“King’s Landing has burned.”

From the corner of her eye, she could see Brienne clench her fists. Theon’s fresh color waned.

Sansa stared ahead for a moment, taking in her brother’s words. She met with Sam’s gaze, doleful eyes and a frown.

And then she returned to eating. “We knew it was a possibility. Cersei has lost her throne.”

She didn’t care for King’s Landing, filth and rot and memories that she wore like her gowns. If the Red Keep had gone, and the people had gone, and every street dismantled, well. Daenerys was good for something at least.

\--

Theon hobbled in an awkward pace around Sansa’s quarters, hands behind his back. Bran sat impassively. Sansa sat impassively.

A rushed frenzy had taken over him. It pounded in his skull and thrummed in his veins. This was the feeling he got when he fought, when he killed those wights and when he rescued his sister. It was the warrior in him, the kraken waking.

“You will hurt yourself if you don’t take a seat, Theon.”

He paused long enough to look at Sansa, the calming sea of her eyes, the firm set of her mouth. 

“My sister was out there, without me,” Theon said. Yara could take care of herself. That was more than obvious, but as he had wanted to be at Sansa’s side, he wished he could have been with Yara on the seas, watching their uncle burn.

Instead, he had died and lived and been healing ever since. Instead, he told Sansa he wanted to stay here.

“There’s nothing you could have done to help,” she said softly. Her chin pointed to the chair at the other end of the table. “Yara would not have seen her brother fighting with a wound like yours not healed. We both know that.”

He took a deep breath and ignored the stretch of muscle and skin that ached still. And then he sat, facing the remaining Starks. “I don’t like being useless.”

A smile, brief and understand, flickered across her lips. “Sometimes, we have to accept that about ourselves.”

There were wisdom in those words, but he didn’t want to accept them. Sansa was a perfect lady: smart, poised, clever. She had always had that in her arsenal, and it was nothing anyone could have taken away from her. She was too strong for that. But Bran, there was still part of _him_ that understood that feeling. When he chanced a look at the younger Stark, he saw of spark of recognition there in those dark eyes. His body was broken, and so was Theon’s.

He licked his lips, dry tongue against dry skin. “Do we have any official word?”

“No,” Sansa confirmed, letting him get away with not answering her.

For now, he supposed. She might bring it up later, needle him with her worry. He wanted to spill out every word he had ever learned, in every permutation that could be said when she did that to him.

Perhaps now was not the best time for stunning revelations - or maybe not as stunning as they could have been. It felt as though he had always put Sansa inside of his heart and kept her there, but he knew that wasn’t true. He never thought of her that way when they grew up. She was beautiful, yes, but haughty and destined to be a queen. And he was - not right for her, in any capacity. At any time of history. Crude, lusting, the kind of man who would feel up his own sister, the kind of man who would kill two little boys to lay claim to Winterfell. 

His teeth ground down together. This wasn’t the time to think about this, but he watched the way she clasped her hands together, shoulders back, an easy arch of her eyebrow as she surveyed the room.

It hadn’t been when they were children and it hadn’t been when she married Ramsay. It had been the desperation in her blue eyes when she grasped his hand and begged him to come with her. It had been the idea that she needed anyone, but especially him, and that she wanted him to leave with her. To escape. 

He knew it then that he loved her. Not a lusting kind of love, but soft and gentle. He kept coming back to Winterfell. 

A prickling ran down his spine until he caught Bran’s gaze on him. There was no particular look on his face, but Theon had come to expect that. Bran rarely showed emotion, but even with a blank slate and vacant eyes, it was as though Bran could see right through him.

With shame, he looked down at the table. He wasn’t worthy, regardless of the kind of man they thought he was now. Regardless ofhow much he had fought for his honor and their trust and the trust and love of his sister. He would never be worthy of Sansa Stark.

In all honesty, who could be?

“We have a new queen,” Sansa said, her voice so soft, it might as well have been breathed into his ear. Her fingers tapped lightly against the marred wood, nails clicking. _Taptaptap._

“You seem displeased.”

He looked up in time to see her give her brother a crooked smile. What had she been planning while he slept? Daenerys would not be his choice in fealty, but that didn’t matter much in this world. If Yara knelt, if Sansa knelt, he would. 

“I had hoped that I had enough of a hold over Tyrion still to sow doubt, especially considering your, ah, declaration.”

“What did you see?” Theon asked. “Exactly.”

“A city fallen, the Red Keep destroyed. People burned, melted, dead.” Bran took a small breath, cocking his head to the side, almost bird like. “Fire and blood.”

Sansa blanched. 

Theon’s stomach did flips. He closed his eyes. This was war, he wanted to say. He wished the words would come out of his mouth, not as a comfort to Sansa, but as a general rule. 

War held casualties, and this was the price they paid to be rid of Cersei. 

“She won’t be content with destroying just King’s Landing.” Sansa resumed her _taptaptap_. “She wants the kingdoms.”

He heard the chill in her words though. Sansa did not care about the other kingdoms; she cared about the North.

He wondered how Yara felt, if she would be willing to sacrifice the Salt Throne for this new queen in order to keep her people from burning. 

Theon didn’t believe that his sister would go quietly. 

“That doesn’t mean she would destroy the rest of Westeros,” Theon pointed out. “Not if we bend the knee.”

It struck him now that her eyes might have been desperate when they jumped, but it was for life and freedom. It struck him now that her eyes were a blaze, blue and hot and overwhelming as she stared him down. 

“I will not bend the knee as easily as my brother,” Sansa informed them. “I will not bend the knee at all, Theon.”

He would follow her to the ends of the world, into the dragon’s den and to the west of Westeros and to the deserts of Essos. 

“We just fought one war,” Bran spoke up. “Our troops are in King’s Landing, with Jon.”

“You think I should bend, little brother?” she asked him. 

A shiver ran through Theon’s body.

Bran stared at her, silent and still. She matched him, but Theon could see that there was a stiffness to her still, and the slight jut of her bottom lip as if she was fighting some emotion that threatened to overwhelm her face. In public, he would have never caught this look. Her mask was fine lace and soft satin, draped over and hiding the steel that coursed through her body. 

Bran Stark was, without a doubt, much better at a staring contest. 

“No.”

She nodded. That was all she clearly needed, but Theon knew there would be more to it than just willpower. How did one strong arm a queen with a dragon? Who had the blood to sit on the Iron Throne?

He rubbed a hand over the thick and unruly beard that had grown over his face like moss on a tree. 

\--

The halls were alive with gossip and rumor as they hadn’t been in years, before the Stark family split apart. Talk of losing the North, of this new queen of theirs, would they be ruled again, dragons. 

Jon Snow was no longer the King of the North and they should have never voted him as such. 

Stark blood may run in his veins, but Ned Stark was not enough to overcome whoever his mother was. 

They would lose the North. 

The North was lost. 

They did not want a foreigner queen, the people sighed.

They did not want a Targaryen, dishonorable and cold and ignorant of this land, they moaned.

\--

Theon knew that the North was stronger than they looked, especially now with most of the great houses and names empty. There would be homes to fill soon, people to title. He understood the worth of what it meant to rule, at least. He had been raised by Ned Stark and he had been, so very briefly, a prince himself. 

He was not suited for ruling. Time and experience and trauma had taught him his place in this world, a coward and a soldier and a brother and a friend. A coward that forced bravery into his veins the way the women in his life had done. Yara, Arya, Sansa, Catelyn. 

But he didn’t think they could survive a dragon and an army of Unsullied and Dothraki. Or, at least, of those that still breathed. 

And his sister was an unknown. 

He was restless. A certain sort of exhaustion ceased his body, but he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t quiet his thoughts enough to even try. So he roamed the halls and listened to the drunk words of servants and knights and lords that had no idea of how they could possibly comprehend the oddity that was Brandon Stark. 

Theon wanted to say that he understood. 

But that would require talking to people he did not know and who probably still saw him as - a traitor. Reek.

He wanted to think it was an accident, a circumstance of fate that brought him to Sansa’s door in the middle of the night, limbs half-frozen in the winter air. He knew that would be a lie. She was the only one he could talk to without fear of judgement. He leaned his forehead against the barrier between them. It would be improper. People would talk. Enough people had talked about her in her lifetime, without him adding more to the flapping tongues. 

He placed his hand flat on the wood.

“Hey!” A sharp, small voice pulled him out of his spell. He snapped up, away from the door, and saw a shorter woman with a rounded face and a glare as dangerous as a blade. In her arms was a young boy, half asleep. “What do you - Oh.”

She blinked at him, almost owlishly.

“What.”

“You’re one of the lords, aren’t you? Theo? Thinder?” Her nose scrunched up with the wrongness of the sounds she made, and she shifted the boy from one hip to the next with a little bit of effort.

“Theon.”

Who was this woman? A maid? One of Sansa’s ladies? 

“Right. What do you think you’re doing outside of Lady Sansa’s room?” It was as though the idea of him being a lord didn’t matter to her, and it was oddly refreshing. “Go on now.” She waved him off with her free arm. 

His lips quirked into a smile. “She has no fear of me.” He patted the front of his pants. “Dickless.”

The word settled heavy on his tongue. He didn’t like it, but better said by him than someone more unsavory, someone who used it as an arrow to the heart.

Her mouth was a perfectly round “o”, eyes wide, eyebrows high. “Huh. Like that Lord Varys.”

It wasn’t a question, and he was grateful he didn’t have to answer that.

“In any case, you are not going to bother my lady. Come on now.” Her grip on his elbow was iron, and he was at risk of losing his arm if he didn’t tell his legs to move with her. “Little Sam is fussy. Nightmares, I think, after all the dead.”

Theon looked at this Little Sam, who stared back at him with dark eyes and a curly mop of hair. He reminded him of Rickon. He reminded him of the little boy who had stood in for Rickon. 

“But he’s a brave boy, just like his father,” the woman chatted away, ignoring Theon’s silence and reluctance. They were heading toward the kitchens. 

“His father?”

“Samwell Tarly,” she answered. 

Theon knew of the Tarlys, and he knew that they were dead. Well, the two who had been heads of the house. He supposed that would make this strange and forceful woman a lady soon enough. If Queen Daenerys was kind enough to allow the Tarlys to remain a house.

She only let him go once they reached the kitchens, but before he could make a quick escape, Little Sam was being shoved into his arms. He held the boy away from his body, hands under his armpits, staring at him with bemusement. He couldn’t remember the last time he had held a child, and this wasn’t exactly a welcome exchange, as if he was being chained down. The boy blinked at him before sticking his tongue out.

Theon’s brow furrowed. 

His mother turned to stare at them, hands on her hips. “That is not how you hold a baby.”

“I wouldn’t really call him a baby,” Theon grumbled. 

Her dagger glare was back. “Hold him properly.”

He rolled his eyes and placed the boy on his hip. “Fine.”

Little Sam was not a baby, but a child of at least three or four. He was heavy in the way that most toddlers were heavy, eyes full of intelligence and some semblance of personality that must have been forming. What Theon knew of children was Bran and Rickon’s births, and how they screamed and fussed. How Bran began moving before the rest of them were ready for it, and how Rickon’s sharp teeth found skin whenever he could. They were messy and annoying and screaming sacks of skin until about this age, where more personality shone out. 

Little Sam regarded him, this strange and bent and bearded man, with a scrutiny that would put most to shame. 

He didn’t like it. 

“Warm milk will do the trick,” she murmured, mostly to herself as she lit a fire. 

A lady-to-be with an interesting skill set. 

She glanced over her shoulder to look at the two of them. “I’ll make you some as well. I read that, you know, in a book.”

She said it was a sort of overwhelming pride that made him give her a pathetic little smile. 

Little Sam banged his head into Theon’s shoulder.

“I’m Gilly.”

“Lady Gilly Tarly.”

The look of disgust on her face was a surprising shock, and he laughed without meaning to. Little Sam’s forehead connected with his jaw, and it stung, but he still laughed. 

“I suppose… that’s going to be correct now, isn’t it?” Gilly sighed, turning back to her pot of milk bubbling. “What with the old queen out and the new queen in.” She made a clicking sound, a snap of tongue against her teeth. “I don’t understand this whole stupid system.”

“You could spend your entire life in it, and still not understand,” Theon said. They were almost comforting words, and Gilly gave him an impressive smile before pointing a finger at her son.

“Now, you quit hitting the lord,” she scolded.

“No! No! No!”

Theon knew he would have a new collection of bruises in the morning, fresh and purple, to blend into the mass of greens and yellows he still sported.


	4. Chapter 4

In the days that followed, a flurry of wings darkened already dark skies. Ravens descended upon Winterfell with intense purpose. Letters had to be sorted. The world had been shaken to its core in a way that the fight with the Night King never would. 

Sansa held several of these notes in her hand, but most fluttered to the floor as she sorted through them, unread. It was Arya’s handwriting that she was looking for, that cramped and awkward hand with letters that ran too close together. It was Jon’s, thick and neat. They were alive, and she closed her eyes to hold those letters close to her heart. She whispered a prayer, to the gods old and new, to the Children. 

“You could have asked,” Bran told her, lazily scanning over the dropped notes. “I would have told you.”

“Please don’t take offense to this, little brother, but you don’t quite have a bedside manner.” She cupped his cheek, fingers running over the edges of his cheekbone. He allowed it, and she was able to tell herself that she didn’t feel a lick of disappointment when he didn’t lean into her touch. 

“That’s fair,” he said. “What do they say?”

So Sansa read them to him. Arya’s was curt, to the point. King’s Landing had fallen. The Hound was dead. Cersei Lannister was dead. Tyrion Lannister was on trial. Everything was a mess.

Jon’s was - less than informative. He simply said that Daenerys Targaryen, First of her Name, wished an audience with the last remaining Houses in Westeros. But he did write that he loved them and hoped to see them soon.

She sat heavily on the edge of a chair, gripping the parchment tightly in her hand. “This is it, then.”

“Tyrion’s on trial.” Bran’s head cocked to the side. “I wonder what he’s done.”

She smoothed out the wrinkles of her skirt that were made when she sat. “Treason, I assume.”

“You were clumsy.”

It wasn’t an accusation, but she wished that it was because the monotone of the whole thing was grating on her worse than being scolded. She _was_ clumsy, and she hated that emotion had led her to that point. Anger, frustration, fear. She still believed that there was something wrong with the new queen on the Iron Throne, and King’s Landing gone didn’t do much to quell that belief. 

But she had let all of her frustrations tip her hand in what was the wrong direction. Her gut had said that Tyrion was close to the queen, and Tyrion could be the one to find a way to put Jon on the throne instead. 

Not because she thought Jon would be a better ruler. The truth of the matter there was that Jon would have been a terrible choice for a king. He had been given the reigns of the North and look at what he had done with that. 

And she hadn’t wanted to create more war. She was tired of war.

She just didn’t want another Cersei or Joffrey or Mad King on the throne. Better to chop the snake’s head off before wondering if it would bite or not. 

Her teeth sunk into her lip, worrying it over as she let all of these thoughts tumble around her mind. 

“I betrayed Jon’s trust, and all it did was get Tyrion arrested.” She glanced at Bran. “It was a childish mistake.”

“You did what you thought was right.”

“I’m not sure that I did.”

He nodded, as if he knew that all along and was simply waiting for her to come to that conclusion on her own. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him, another childish action that she would let herself succumb to one of these days. 

“You’ll find a way to redeem yourself.”

Yes. This meeting of the lords and houses. She would see what was left of Westeros’s ruling elite, and she would have to work off of that. So many had been - if things did not work out well in Tyrion’s favor, and she didn’t think it would, that would be the end of the Lannisters, wouldn’t it?

“You’ll need to stay,” Sansa told Bran. “With Arya already in King’s Landing.”

“A Stark must always remain at Winterfell.”

She nodded, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “You can’t take a title, but you’re still a Stark.”

“I’ll watch Winterfell,” he promised, and there was that briefest, almost beautiful, hint that of the old Bran. A Stark, through and through. 

“It’ll take a couple of weeks. I should start preparing for the journey.”

\--

Sansa went in search of Theon. She had known he’d gotten a letter from his sister, and it seemed as though a weight had lifted from his shoulders. He was healed and the war was over, and she knew she would have to turn him back over. He’d been in Winterfell for too long, and the Iron Islands would need him soon. 

He wasn’t in his room, however. She knocked several times and waited before finally easing his door open, hoping to not find him in the middle of dressing or waking him up. The bed was made, the floor spotless, and not a single Theon in sight. 

There were not many places an injured man could go, and besides that, the snow had started. The world outside had been left a stark white, and she didn’t believe he would purposely go out there when there was no reason to. 

She found him in the kitchen. Actually, she had heard his voice first, the soft pitch of his voice and the level of uncertainty that still colored his words. She slowed her steps and eased up to the doorway, leaning her head in. Theon sat in a chair, and a child sat in his lap, pulling on anything his chubby hands could get to. Theon’s beard, the strings of his shirt that had been lazily left undone more than likely.

Little Sam, and humming by a stove, his mother Gilly. 

“You’re good with him,” Gilly said.

“You keep saying that, and I don’t know which of us you’re trying to convince,” Theon muttered in return. “He’s got a sailor’s grip, though.”

“Does he? And what good will that do him, being here?” 

Sansa watched the small smile curl over his face as he molded Little Sam’s hands into a fist, pulling it back to launch an imaginary weapon.

“You won’t always be here, Lady Tarly. I do believe your husband’s home is part of the Riverlands.”

Gilly made a face, throwing a glare over her shoulder. “I told you to stop calling me that, my lord.”

“Only when you stop calling me lord.”

It was strange, to watch this scene from afar, like Sansa had burst in on something that wasn’t meant for her eyes. Shame bubbled in her stomach, and she knew it was shame born from a kind of jealousy she hadn’t felt in a long time. Theon was more relaxed than she had seen him in years, perhaps before they all separated. His smiles came easy, and his conversation was casual, charming. He was both old and new, and part of her wished that he could be those things with her.

And that was ridiculous. And unkind, truly. She could not expect Theon to heal alongside her. It would be unhealthy, and hadn’t she been able to find her own footing without him? Her own voice? He was free to do the same, with whomever he wished. 

But she was here now, and Theon had made an interesting point. Gilly was married to Sam Tarly, and with the other Tarlys having succumbed to a bit of dragon fire, he would be heir. He would be lord. They were part of the last of the houses. 

So Sansa decided to stop hiding in her own home and stepped into the kitchen. “Something smells delicious.”

Gilly spun on her heel and dropped into a clumsy curtsy. “Lady Sansa, you can’t just sneak up on people after everything we’ve gone through.”

She couldn’t help the brief flash of a grin that stretched her mouth. “Are you admonishing me in my own home?”

Her face flushed as red as Sansa’s hair, but her voice held firm. “Yes, my lady.”

“Point taken, I will do my best to announce myself well ahead of time.”

Theon had said nothing, only watching her. Little Sam, absorbing the change of atmosphere, stilled completely in Theon’s arms and watched her as well. 

“I’m supposing your sister’s letter was good news?” she asked him.

He nodded, slow, as if his head was just too much weight for his neck to hold now. “She’s insisted I come home after the landsmeet.”

“Yes, I was trying to find you to ask about that.”

Gilly turned around, leaning a hip against a counter and resting one hand on her belly. “What’s this? Or should I just ignore it?”

Sansa pursed her lips. “Unfortunately, it’s not something we can truly ignore.”

“Am I a we now?”

Theon sighed and looked down at Little Sam. “Your mother just doesn’t understand what her role is.”

“Momma’s a lady,” Little Sam said with such a gravely serious voice. “I’m a lady!”

Gilly sighed. “Yes, you can also be a lady and Daddy can be a lady.”

“The world would be a much better place if the women ruled,” Sansa murmured. Perhaps, then, Daenerys could be a good ruler. If given the chance. If given the right people by her side. 

Theon frowned, and there was a flicker of this ache that she watched flash over his face and pool into his eyes. “The Ladies Sam and Sam Tarly has a nice ring to it. Lady Sansa is right.”

Little Sam beamed up her before wriggling his way off of Theon’s lap and ran to his mother. “You all are going to fill his head with strange ideas of this world.” She picked him up and smoothed back fair hair from his face. “But perhaps that’s not such a terrible thing these days.”

They were creating a new world, Sansa realized. Yes, the nobles had been slaughtered and houses lay empty and burning and drowned, but… Perhaps that was not such a terrible thing these days. Gilly was far more perceptive than Sansa had given her credit for, and she could see why Theon could feel at ease in her presence. Sansa felt it too, not so much as though her troubles had been swept away, but for a brief second, someone helped her hold them up. 

“Perhaps not,” Sansa agreed. “Will you be coming with Sam to King’s Landing, Gilly?”

Gilly blinked at her. “Why would we go? Oh, right. The new queen, and we - Sam is going to become Lord Tarly now.”

“You’ll be a good lady,” Sansa told her. “If that’s your concern. Remember, strange ideas.”

Theon stood, groaning softly as he did so, and several things in his body popped and cracked as he straightened himself out. “She should stay here.”

There was a certain sort of care in his voice, as if his bubble had extended out to this poor woman and her son, so out of place in their world. And he was right. There was no telling what would happen when they met with the queen, whether or not they would be burned if they didn’t kneel. Gilly and her unborn babe and Little Sam should stay here, with Bran. She wished that Arya was here as well, to take care of the North if anything happened to her. 

\--

And so it was, a few days later, they were able to acquire a few carriages and horses to carry their small party. It was a strange one, something she didn’t believe would have ever been cobbled together if not for the circumstances that had brought them all to Winterfell to begin with. Sansa sat next to Theon, her hand on her knee. Each bump in the road, and her pinky would slide against his. His hand would twitch. Brienne of Tarth and another guard rode in front, and Samwell Tarly rested in another wagon with his numerous books and muttering under his breath about how he was going to be ill with the pressure of the journey’s end. 

“Will Yara pledge?” she whispered to Theon. 

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye before looking forward again. “She already has.”

Sansa would _not_ kneel.

But she also didn’t intend to burn.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for nasty language, thanks yara

Their arrival was lackluster. It was the best word for it, but Sansa couldn’t be upset by that. This was, in her opinion, a somber occasion. The wrong person would sit upon that throne, and all she could hope for was that Daenerys sat on a sword and got a sharp prick in her ass. 

Treasonous words, she thought. Funny how a few years ago, in this same place, she had fought so hard to free her family from their own treasonous thoughts.

If she had not told Cersei about her father wanting them to leave, how different would this war had gone? Would it be Stannis Baratheon on the throne, or his brother, sweet Renly?

What-ifs were useless now. 

Jon Snow waited for them outside the wreckage that was the Red Keep. With him stood Davos Seaworth and Yara Greyjoy. Next to her, Theon stiffened. 

She wished she could hold his hand. 

She wished she could understand why there was a fear that accompanied those words, slick and oily. 

Jon swept Sansa up into a hug. She was tall, and so her toes drug along the ground as he held her close, hand on the back of her head. She buried her face into his neck. He smelled of the South, of fire and ash and warmth. He didn’t smell of home anymore. Ever the good girl, she swallowed back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her at the machinations she had turned over and over on the long journey to the capital. 

“Sansa,” he breathed, gentle and sweet. 

She wanted to beg him to come home and forget this madness. 

Instead, she removed himself from his embrace after an appropriate amount of time, hands on his shoulders as she stared at him with a small smile. 

Arya stepped up next to him, and both Stark sisters fell into each other. A shudder ran through Sansa as they held each other close. 

“You didn’t tell me you were leaving,” Sansa admonished. 

“I didn’t intend to come back.”

It struck her with a frozen slap, but she couldn’t say she was surprised. Arya had gone and she had come back crudely put together and now she had gone again. When Sansa pulled back, her hands on Arya’s round face, she saw something she hadn’t seen in years. There was a spark there, in their father’s eyes that stared back at her. Seconds ticked by until Arya swatted her hands away.

“I’m alive, right? Stop giving me that look,” she muttered.

Sansa dropped her hands. She did her best to not gawk at the damage around them, smoke still curling around buildings after weeks of the attack. Surveying it would not ease her concerns, and she feared there would be a certain amount of glee knowing that this place of horrors and nightmares had been essentially wiped out. It was wrong to have wanted that.

When she turned, she saw Theon disappear, Yara’s hand gripping his arm and all but dragging him away. She bit her tongue to keep from yelling out. His sister wouldn’t do anything to hurt him further, and she had to remember that. 

Davos gave her a warm smile. “My lady. Ser Brienne. Sam.”

Brienne came up to Sansa’s side now that the family reunion was over. How she wished for a few moments more, a second, for time to stop and allow them all the moments they would ever need. But she wasn’t here to fulfill a childish desire, and sooner or later, reality would need to be faced. 

Jon clapped Sam on the back in a tight embrace as Sansa looped her arm through Davos’s. He was not her father, but she appreciated his presence more than she realized. 

“Sansa, please. We are as family, the way you’re attached to my brother.”

His smile and gaze were much softer as he patted her hand and began to walk with her up the stairs. “Ah, but you have a better head on your shoulders than that lad.”

A surprising chuckle bubbled up in her chest and slipped through her lips. “Try telling him that, would you? He seems to listen to you more than he has ever listened to me.”

Behind them, she could hear Brienne asking Arya about the Hound. Not Jaime. Maybe it hurt. She had never been in love to know that pain, but she knew enough about loss to understand. 

“Dead. He went out fighting,” Arya told her. 

“Good. He’d have hated any other way,” Brienne said in return. 

In normal circumstances, Queen Daenerys would have come out with her retinue to greet them. But these were not normal circumstances, and Sansa rather felt as though she was being delivered as a meal to the one remaining dragon. 

_No,_ she reminded herself. _There are still three._

The throne room was not at all what she remembered and exactly like it nonetheless. Joffrey had done so many awful things to her here, in this room, with an audience. A shudder ran through her. 

“Watch your step, my lady,” Davos warned. “The ground is a little uneven.”

Debris filled the floor and half the walls were missing, opening them up to the grey and cold world outside of them. Or inside, really. An interesting redecoration. But what remained intact, staring them down, was that throne. The one that had killed her family and hundreds of others. 

Her mouth went dry. 

Daenerys was speaking with Grey Worm, her back to them. She looked like a star that had fallen from the sky, to illuminate the grime around her, blue dress trim and impeccable, white hair loose and blowing with the breeze. 

Sansa hated her more than she thought was possible, and she was standing in a room full of people who would be more than happy to encourage her to bend the knee. 

“Dany,” Jon called out, his walk slow and languid as he made his way over to her. 

She turned, and a smile broke out across her face. It was the grin of someone who had won. And then she turned to the dirty retinue of Winterfell, sans Theon still, surveying them until her eyes came to land on Sansa herself. 

“Lady Sansa,” she greeted with a happy purse of her lips. 

Sansa inclined her head, because she was hateful and petty but not without manners. “Your Majesty, I must say I love what you’ve done with the place.”

Daenerys clasped her hands in front of her, glancing around. “It will take some time to rebuild, as all things take time.” And then those hands were on Sansa’s, and she was taken away from the shield that was Brienne and Davos. “Thank you for coming.”

_As if there were a choice involved._

“Have any of the other lords arrived?”

“Uncle Edmure,” Arya said with a sigh. “And his wife, that Frey woman.”

In all the chaos that had come down around them, in the years of war and turmoil and pain, Sansa had forgotten that there even was an Uncle Edmure. Her mother’s brother, last heard from the night of his-- of Robb’s and her mother’s-- Uncle Edmure had lived in their place, and she felt sorry for him, if she was being honest. To have lived and done nothing except inherit land and title once everyone else had done the fighting. 

Sansa arched an eyebrow. “Lord of Riverrun.”

He didn’t deserve it, but so few men ever did. 

Daenerys looked to Jon. “You did not tell me he was an uncle.”

“Lady Catelyn’s brother, so of no relation to myself,” Jon murmured. 

This farce was a lot to take in, watching the tic of her mouth as her jaw tightened in reminder that Jon was not Tully, and he was only Stark through Lyanna. He was Targaryen. How many of them here knew that? 

“Ah,” she said. 

“He’s not missing out on anything,” Arya chimed in. “The Blackfish, though.”

Brienne frowned, shifting her weight a bit. “The Blackfish was a brave and honorable man.”

Although he had not backed down to the Lannisters to help her reclaim Winterfell, she now understood exactly how he must have felt. His land, his home. He would have died for it, and he had, and she didn’t believe he had any regrets about that. She hoped that was the Tully spirit inside of her, the one that had graced her dear mother as well. 

It was almost comical the way that Daenerys looked, lips pursed and brow furrow, fingers digging into Jon's upper arm. She had no clue what they were saying. It might as well have been a foreign language to their new conqueror. 

Sansa bit back a smile. No need to rub salt into the wound; watching her squirm would be far more entertaining. 

"You all must be tired," Daenerys finally said, bursting through the familiarity of the group. "Rooms have been set up that haven't been destroyed."

"Sansa will stay with me," Arya announced. "I'll show her the way."

Nevermind that Sansa had lived her longer than any of the others, but she nodded and gave a thankful smile all the same. She curtsied. "Thank you for your hospitality, your grace."

Brienne followed the sisters out and down the hall. They were silent except for three distinct footfalls. They knew to be quiet, or Sansa assumed Brienne knew. It could have been that she didn't have anything to say worth speaking of.

\--

Theon was sore, but he didn't make a sound as Yara crushed him to her. She was thick and strong and firm against him. She smelled of salt and sand. She was home, rough. 

"You idiot. When I sent you off to fight the dead, I didn't say you could become one."

"What is dead may never die."

She pulled back, glaring at him as she looked him over. "You look fucking dead."

He gave her a tired smile. "You look happy."

Her grip was tight at his collar, hands digging into the fabric of his shirt, and she shook him. Carefully, easily, with the kind of control that some people could only envy. Still, his head snapped back, and he saw nothing but grey skies and white clouds above him before she filled his vision again. 

“How can I not be? That bastard Euron is dead, his crew has been taken by the Drowned God, I am queen, and I have you.” Her hands dropped, and she crossed her arms over her chest as she took a step back. “Do I?”

He took a deep breath. There was a healing cut on the side of her face, spanning around her jaw and dipping up towards her cheek. Her hair was pulled back in a terrible ponytail, either too short or too messy to stay put there. Her clothes hung off of her body, but not as ill-fitting as they had been when he rescued her only - it was only a couple of months ago, wasn’t it? All of it. Two, three. Time seemed to drift on by them as easily as the snows did. 

She was expecting an answer. 

“Did you say queen?” was all he could say in return. His brain finally caught up to her words, sinking in and taking hold. Queen. He had backed her, supported her claim, knew she was his queen in his heart, but he had thought that she pledged to the Targaryen queen. 

“The Iron Islands are free,” Yara told him. Pride dripped off of her words, and she wasn’t quite a beamer, but her smile was relaxed. 

She was happy. 

Home was free.

Home was North. 

Sansa would not bend. 

He wanted to be excited, and he was, but perhaps the look he wore was less a happy smile and more of a grimace. 

“You look like you might be sick.” Her brow furrowed. “What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you hear what I said?” 

“Yara,” he breathed. 

“The Starks,” she replied, as if she knew. But she always knew. She was his big sister, and no matter how many stupid and cowardly and brave things he did, she could read them. “There’s nobody else besides the new Dorne cunt to challenge for the kingdoms.”

“All Sansa wants is for the North to be free.” He would give anything to help them achieve that. 

Yara might have been queen, and she might have been pirate and asshole and perhaps one of the hardest person he had ever met, but it didn’t stop her from rolling her eyes. “You’re kidding me.”

“What?”

“Do you hear yourself?”

“I’m only saying that giving up one kingdom is a slope that could be taken advantage of.”

“And I’m telling you that loyalty is rewarded with good fortune.” Yara dug her finger into his chest. Theon winced, sighing softly. She always saw. She always knew. It was an incredibly annoying ability of hers. “The wolf bitch--”

“Don’t call her that, Yara. Not - Don’t,” he growled. His lips stretched over his teeth, and he was sure he looked as fearsome as a rabbit, but it was what it was. 

She threw her head back and laughed: hearty and deep. “Shit, you love her.”

“She saw me.” His shoulders lifted in a shrug. That was it, the naked truth. She had told him that he was Theon Greyjoy, and he had jumped off the walls of Winterfell with her cold fingers against his palm. “I know that it won’t happen, Yara. I don’t hold any stupid notions--”

“All you are is stupid notions,” she scoffed. 

He dug the toe of his boot into the ground. He had never loved before, like this. He had loved Robb with an ache that still punched him. He had loved his father enough to beg for his affections. He loved Yara so much that he risked his yellow-bellied skin for her. 

This was different. It was the ocean, wide and deep and dark. It was unknown and enveloping. He would do anything for her, he knew that. Anything she asked, or any other Stark, because they were a unit. 

How many times had he heard Ned say, “The lone wolf dies but the pack survives?”

It had begun to snow again, and Yara cursed. “Come on, you prick. Let’s get you inside and warm your belly up. And then you can lay your bleeding heart all over me.”

“You’re fucking annoying,” he breathed. She glanced over her shoulder at him, cocking an eyebrow and curling one corner of her mouth up.

“Now, you sound like someone I used to know.” They were quiet as she led them inside of the Keep, or at least the bits of it that still remained with walls standing. Daenerys had done a number on King’s Landing, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about that. How Yara felt about that. Was she okay with the death of so many innocents? Of children and their mothers who had done nothing but have the misfortune to be stuck between too many nobles?

He didn’t ask.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, because he wasn’t sure if he knew what his own would be. If he _had_ his own opinion. Thinking for himself was still a strange novelty, no matter how much time was put between him and Ramsay’s death. 

“You know that being cockless won’t win you any points for the _Lady_ of Winterfell, right? Or the fact that you betrayed the Starks.”

“Or any other number of crimes I’ve committed since the day I was born.”

“I don’t know, I could spin her a sweet tale of what a whiny, scrawny piece of shit you were when you stole my heart.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was actually going to have that meeting but then it got too long so it's cut in half :'D so sooner update yay?

Jon clasped a hand on Theon’s shoulder, a weary but relieved smile on his normally dour face. Theon managed a response in kind, his mouth twisty and uncertain. “You made it.”

He had lived when so many others who deserved it more hadn’t, but he wasn’t about to lay his insecurities at Jon’s feet. They had been close, years and years ago. Not as close as him and Robb, no. Jon was still a bastard, after all. But they had been friends and brothers nonetheless. And now - well, if not for Sansa, he was sure Jon would have taken his head with that sword at his hip. 

“So did you.”

“Something about the Northern folk that they never seem to stay down,” Jon agreed. 

A warmth passed through Theon, surprising and unexpected. Each time this family said something that included him in it again, he couldn’t help but feel like he was in a dream.

“It’s the winters,” Theon said. “Have you seen Sansa?”

“Yeah, her and Arya left to their room a bit ago. I’m sure she’ll be down for dinner.”

Theon looked around them, at the crumbling walls that still stood, breathing in air still tinged with fire and smoke. “She plans to host a dinner here?”

“If by ‘she’, you mean Daenerys, then yes.” Jon peered at him, as if trying to weigh his next words carefully. “You’ve been listening to Sansa.”

Every word, if he could. Every note, every frustrated spit, all of that quiet anger beneath her pretty smiles. “I’m just hoping we’re not going to eat rock.”

Jon laughed, soft and easy. “There are food stores. It’s not been an easy transition here, Theon, but I’m - I hope you can be a voice of reason to Sansa. She trusts you.”

“What exactly are you asking here?”

He pressed his lips together into a thin line, dour face even more so as his mouth all but disappeared inside of his black beard. “I’m tired of war.”

“We all are,” Theon muttered. “But I can’t change Sansa’s mind about this. You must be desperate if you’re asking me.”

“I’m trying to do her proud by making the smart decision.”

What was the smart decision here? There wasn’t anyone else who was capable or willing to sit the Iron Throne and run the six kingdoms. Sansa, perhaps, but she wanted nothing more than home. Everyone else who was capable seemed to be dead or interested in their own issues. What might have been best was to dissolve the kingdoms, but that would never happen in this state. Queen Daenerys would never allow it. 

It would be wise for Sansa to comply, but he knew her well enough to know she was too stubborn, too willing to die for the North. 

It wouldn’t be wise for Daenerys to give into Sansa’s demands, but it would be better for her in the long run. 

“Have _you_ tried talking to her? You ruled Winterfell together,” Theon pointed out. 

“She doesn’t want to hear what I’m going to say.”

Love made people strange and weak and easy to mold. Theon didn’t want that to be him, and he had to wonder how many other people saw the way he looked at Sansa, if that’s what Jon also saw and figured he was the best person to approach this situation.

He didn’t wish to see Sansa burned by a dragon, but he also didn’t want to talk her out of something that meant everything to her. Maybe - even her life?

Theon had never thought about Sansa being reckless, but she was a survivor. She would do whatever it took to do what she thought necessary. 

“You did hand over your home to a foreigner,” Theon said with a nod. He sighed. This was going to be a disaster. 

“And Sansa will never forgive me for that. Some part of her will always hate me, and some part will always hate you, but I’d rather face her wrath alive than dead.”

There was a heavy emphasis on the word _dead_ , and it was true that they both knew what would happen to her. Jon’s influence could only go so far, but to sound so defeated about it, to not act when his sister’s life was on the line?

A rage wound its way through Theon, squeezing his chest until it hurt to breathe without the anger crawling up his throat, out of his lungs, out of his blood. 

“And if she did go for Sansa, for Arya, what will you do, Jon Snow?”

A world of sorrow lay solemnly in Jon’s gaze. “Go to war.”

\--

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Sansa said to Theon. She was seated next to him at one of the few tables that still remained.

Many others, mostly soldiers, took a seat upon the floor to eat. Brienne and Podrick had done so, sitting off in a corner to themselves. Arya had managed to find herself seated next to the newly minted Lord Baratheon, and she was keen to understand the looks the two of them kept flashing each other. Dany sat at the head of the table, with Jon on her right and Grey Worm at her left. Davos sat next to Jon, looking as uncomfortable as she felt, but perhaps that was because dear Uncle Edmure kept speaking to him. Yara was on Theon’s other side, engaged in battle strategy with Prince Quentyn. Sam looked positively miserable, pushing his fork across the plate, while Sweet Robin and Lord Royce sat between him and herself.

The mood of the room was dark. It permeated the air and threatened to choke the life out of everything. 

“There’s plenty to worry about,” Theon said over his goblet of wine, too bitter for his likes. He drank it anyway. 

This was perhaps not the best place to have any conversation so serious, fearful of being called out, but nobody had accused Theon of being smart. Sansa most of all. Better than seeking her out in private, she supposed. Tongues would wag with suspicion then, of romance or treason she couldn’t be sure. 

She dipped her bread into the soup that had been served, letting it soak up. “Only if you worry like a mother hen.”

“Are you calling me your mother?”

She smiled as she took a bite of soggy bread. “Of course not. Besides, my mother wouldn’t--”

“If you try to tell me that Lady Catelyn wouldn’t have done everything in her power to keep you and Arya alive--”

“Keep your voice down before you draw attention!” Sansa hissed, earning a look over Yara’s shoulder in her direction.

And then Yara Greyjoy winked at her. 

Sansa furrowed her brow and felt irritated that she was going to have to work to smooth it out again. Relaxing wasn’t her style. 

“Theon, do you trust me?”

“With my life.”

She turned to face him, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. That was a pledge. She had heard so many pledges in her life, and that was one. Her heart hammered in her chest, heat crashing in waves up her neck and onto her face. 

“Then trust me now.”

“Sansa, you look a little piqued,” Dany called out suddenly. 

Theon went back to eating. 

Sansa blushed furiously. “A little warm, your Grace. The weather of King’s Landing isn’t kind to me.”

Or to anyone anymore. They were all dead. Dany had seen to that. 

But she wore a sympathetic smile. “Of course.”

“I think I should lie down.” Sansa stood before being dismissed, and Arya had to hide her smile in her wine, eyebrows high. A soft clattering behind her told her that both Brienne and Podrick were rising to their feet as well.

Dany’s eyes held nothing less than pure fury, but her smile was graceful and giving. “Of course, we wouldn’t wish to see you fall ill so far from home.”

Theon twitched in his seat, as if he was going to rise as well. She rested her fingertips on his shoulder, the barest pressure to keep him seated. “Enjoy the meal and your sister. Ser Brienne will walk me back.”

There was a flash of what she thought was disappointment on his face, but she supposed it was only because she wouldn’t allow this conversation to continue. She cared for Theon and his opinion, but she knew what she was doing. It was a gamble, but the game always was. 

“Are you actually ill, my lady?” Podrick asked once they had reached the hallway. “Should I get something?”

“Actually, Podrick, that would be wonderful. If you could fetch a maester and see about a sleeping draught?” Sansa asked, her voice soft and pleasant and just a tad bit needy. He nodded too hard, too eagerly, as he turned heel and ran off to find a maester.

“That poor boy,” Brienne muttered. “Sansa, you can say what you need to with him.”

“I don’t want to have his blood on my hands if my gamble doesn’t pay off.”

Brienne fell into line next to her, taller and towering. It always pleased Sansa to see their shadows next to each other, bouncing along stone, always pleased to find a woman taller than herself. It was shameful, but it made her feel somewhat average in height. But that was a secret she kept locked tight. She kept many secrets deep in her heart, and she was good at it.

“I reached too far with Tyrion,” Sansa found herself saying. She knew Brienne wouldn’t tell, and it was easier talking to her than it was to her own sister.

“You blame yourself for his imprisonment.”

“I shouldn’t. It was his own fault if he was too obvious, but yes.”

And if she got Brienne killed or Arya or Jon or Theon. 

She’d say she couldn’t live with herself, but she was sure she’d never make it out of King’s Landing alive again. 

“Hm.” Brienne remained silent, and she wished to pry open that brain and see what was inside of it. “Does anyone know what you’re fully planning to do?”

Sansa clasped her hands behind her back as they walked. “Of course not.”

\--

She didn’t know what time it was when she felt her bed shift, and her body seized in terror. All she knew was that it was still night, the room completely black, her intruder nothing more than a shadow. A scream strangled itself in her throat before she swallowed it back down, uttering only the most minute of gasps. 

The intruder took her hand. “It’s me, Sansa.”

It was Arya’s fingers in hers, her weight shifting the mattress down. 

“What are you doing?” she seethed. With her free hand, she pressed it down over her heart, the rapid _thump thump thump_ easier to feel with nothing but the dressing gown between her and her skin. 

“I could have killed you,” Arya muttered. She let her sister’s hand go, flopping down into the bed and rustling the blankets until she was under them. “You should be more aware.”

“I’m not sleeping with a knife under my _pillow_.”

“You should.”

“You have your own bed,” Sansa said, trying to change the subject. She wasn’t going to have this conversation in the middle of the night with fear controlling her body. “You’re not a child anymore.”

They each lay on their side, looking at each other. Sansa could just begin making out Arya’s silhouette in the dark. 

“Gendry wanted me to stay with him,” Arya said.

Oh. So that was what that was about. A small nugget of shame hit her before she waved it away. Arya had never been traditional, had never been a lady. She was free to do what she wanted with her body, and she should while she could.

“Do you love him?”

“Sex doesn’t have to mean love, Sansa.”

“Right.” Thankfully, it was dark so that her blush couldn’t be seen. 

“I think so. I’ve never loved anyone before,” Arya whispered.

It was strange. This was what Sansa wanted her entire life as a child growing up. When she finally got Arya, finally had a sister to share secrets with her. Before she became the pain in the ass that she was, she used to crawl into Sansa’s bed with her, pudgy little hands holding onto each other in the night. Sometimes it was nightmares. Sometimes it was loneliness.

When she got too big for such things, she would call Sansa the baby for whining about it. Or call her gross. They didn’t have anything common, she didn’t want to be like Sansa. 

“You could do worse than a bastard turned noble,” Sansa finally found herself saying. It was true. There were far worse, and while she didn’t know Gendry well, she knew that both Jon and Davos trusted him. That was good enough for her.

“Even one serving the dragon’s banners?”

She took a deep breath. “Even that.”

\--

After supper, Yara had thrust good ale from home into his hands. “Drink up.”

Before, he would have downed cup after cup. Before, he would have been drunk and seeking out some woman, cupping her curves and pressing a fumbling mouth to her breasts. Now, he sat in front of a fire with good ale and let everything roll over him. 

“You’re souring the mood.” Yara was on the floor, a bum queen, legs at odd angles. Normally, she’d have _also_ found someone to put her hands on. But instead she was here, with him, soaking up the mood he was giving off.

“You can leave,” he told her.

Her head was propped up on her arm as she stared at the ceiling. “And leave you to mope? Besides, I’ve made the rounds. They’re either cockless or eunuchs. Not my style.”

“I’m coming home with you,” Theon announced. He had been thinking about it all day, since seeing her. Since hearing that she was queen and home was free. Whatever happened at the end of tomorrow, he would allow himself to go home with Yara. 

“Are you now?” Her words slurred as she spoke. “And why is that?”

“I want to be on Pyke with you. We need each other.” It would have been easy to say he needed her or be cocky to say she needed him, but he knew the truth. They were the last of the Greyjoys, and he didn’t want to be stuck in Sansa’s orbit when - if - she moved on to be the lady she was always meant to be. 

“Yeah, sure, I’ll make you my Hand or whatever the fucking role is. The kraken lives.”

“The kraken lives,” he whispered.

\--

They gathered outside. The snow storm had passed, leaving behind only faint clouds in the sky. A dragon, black and terrifying, sat in the distance, on top of the coliseum that had once been used for his kind. They all sat in chairs in a half circle facing Daenerys in the middle. It was, to say the least, overly dramatic. A chill still permeated the air, but most of the snow on the ground had melted overnight. Winter never hit hard in the south. 

“The war is over,” she announced. The Unsullied made a unified cheer. 

“I have defeated my enemies. And yours,” Daenerys continued. 

A shiver ran down Sansa’s spine.

“And now it is time to pay dues to the new queen.”


	7. Chapter 7

Queen Daenerys cut an impressive figure, despite her stature and life of horrors. She stood tall, shoulders back, chin high. A glint that reminded Sansa of fire sparked in her eyes as she stared down at all those seated before. She could have easily sat. Cersei would have made certain she had, but Dany was not the queen that Cersei was. If remained to be seen if that was a good thing, or just more awful. 

“I intend to break the cycle that we have continued to feed into, over and over again.” She smiled at them as if they were all children. 

Sansa made sure to not break eye contact, but she was dying to see if Arya’s face was as unconvinced as she felt. It would draw too much attention, and she had no doubts that they would have songs about them for their treachery. 

This had to work.

It was a gambit she was putting too much on, but if nothing else, she could save Arya at the very least. She could save Theon. 

But Sansa didn’t wish to die today. 

“But in order to do that, we _must_ do it together.” She spread her hands, as if inviting the gathered houses to converge into her arms. They were building a better world. A world of Targaryen making. 

“War has torn houses and families apart,” Daenerys continued. “I know I do not know you well, or this land. But I wish to learn, and I wish to be a ruler who cares. I’ve had a hand in some of those issues, I realize that. The Lannisters are gone because of me, and under horrific circumstances I was misled on, I lost House Tyrell as well as Ellaria Sand.” She turned her gaze to Prince Quentyn, inclining her head just enough to convey condolences. 

He nodded with a steely gaze firmly attached to her face. 

Sansa had to keep from grinding her teeth together. 

“I have decided to grant Highgarden to the Unsullied for their part in both the war against the Night King as well as the taking of King’s Landing.”

Murmurs rose amongst some of the others, namely Edmure. Why should he be bothered by such a grand gesture? With Walder Frey dead, her uncle was free to sit the Riverlands with no contest. As long as he bent the knee.

“Do we get a say in this, Your Grace?” Lord Royce inquired. There was no challenge to his voice, but should Daenerys ever attempt to take the Eyrie, she would have more troubles than were worth the fight. 

“I am happy to listen to advice, since as you may have noticed, I am without a Hand or advisors now.”

It sounded so friendly, so open, but Sansa knew it was a show. Those who crossed her didn’t live. Those who made her unhappy didn’t live. She was without mercy. Maybe that was mercy in itself; she was quick to decide judgement when others let it fester until the guilty rotted. 

“What of the Dothraki?” Prince Quentyn asked. “Do you intend to give them their own land?”

Sansa eyed the few warriors that had survived that first line of the dead. They were either lucky or cowardly, she couldn’t decide which. 

“The Dothraki have never been much of one to have one steady home,” Daenerys answered as succinctly as she could.

“Do you mean to say they will roam and pillage and rape?” Sansa heard her voice, but hadn’t remembered even thinking the words that tumbled from her lips. “I understand they are part of your army, Your Grace, but you have a duty to your people now as well.”

Theon and Jon looked at her at the same time, and it was impossible to not notice. 

Daenerys’ jaw clenched for a moment, a slight tic in her beautiful face before it smoothed out. “There will be none of that.”

“There was in King’s Landing,” Arya said. 

Silence fell over them, heavy and unbearable. The Stark girls were not going to bend. Everyone must have known it by now. And yet, Sansa managed to keep her calm demeanor, cool as ice. Let their queen get flustered and angry; it would only go to show that she couldn’t be challenged without leading to conflict. 

“We all lost control,” Jon said, stepping in for her. “And Dany has already punished the offenders.”

Daenerys smiled at Jon, loving and grateful, but there was still spite in her gaze. Sansa was enjoying every second of it. 

“Lady Sansa, you have no cause for concern. I will protect you,” she said in a sweet, soft voice. 

She turned back to the rest, eyeing them each. “Who will bend?”

And who will die. 

Edmure was the first, followed by Prince Quentyn and Gendry. He looked uncomfortable, down on one knee as he pledged himself, and now that Sansa knew the attention wasn’t on her, she did chance a look at Arya. Her face was pinched, nostrils flared. There was no way around what this was. Gendry had been given a title and a name and a home, all for the price of pledging himself to the Mother of Dragons.

And so it went. 

Davos.

Robin and Lord Royce. 

Sam, reluctantly.

Jon. 

Sansa and Arya made no move from their seats, although Brienne did scoot to the end of hers. Curiously enough, both Greyjoys also remained seated.

“As Queen of the Iron Islands, I don’t bend, but I do pledge to keep my allegiance with you, Queen Daenerys, First of Her Name,” Yara said. It sparked a cascade of whispers and shouts. 

Dany held up her hand to silence the masses. “Yara Greyjoy did us all a great favor in lending me her aid, counsel, and ships when I asked her for them. For her loyalty, the Islands had always been a bargaining chip.”

Sansa tried to not let this surprise slip onto her face, but she knew she couldn’t control the height of her brow as she whipped her head in Theon’s direction. From the look on his face, apologetic and concerned, she knew he had known. Well, it was unexpected, but it would still work in her favor. 

And finally, so slowly as to give them time to change their minds, Dany faced Sansa and Arya. 

“Do you refuse to bend the knee and pledge Winterfell and the North?” she asked, each word like a dragon’s bite. 

Sansa folded her hands in her lap. “We do.”

“Arya,” Jon pleaded. 

She gave him a look. “I don’t kneel for anyone.”

Someone snorted, soft, and Sansa suspected it was Gendry. 

The corner of her mouth curled just a bit. 

“I am, as I have always been, here for the North and its freedom to be a separate kingdom,” Sansa said. Her voice was loud, steady, firm. Her gaze never left Dany’s. “You speak of Yara Greyjoy’s loyalty, and it is commendable to be given a kingdom for it.”

“And what has the bitch done to deserve to split off another kingdom from Her Grace’s rule?” Yara spat at Sansa. Theon screwed his eyes shut.

“Talk to my sister like that again, and I will slit your throat,” Arya hissed behind a smile. 

Yara moved to stand, and Dany held a hand up at the same time as Jon moved closer to her and Arya, as Theon placed a hand on his sister’s arm. She sat again. Brienne’s knuckles where ghost white on the pommel of her sword. 

“It’s true that I am no fighter myself. I didn’t pledge ships to Her Grace’s cause. But I did have my men, Northern men, come fight for her. It was my home she was allowed to stay in with her armies. We fought together, we died together against the Night King.” And now, Sansa stood, tall and fierce as she gestured to her sister. “Arya Stark is who you owe your lives to. Who you, Daenerys Targaryen, can thank for your throne and your kingdom of ash and soot.”

Dany’s face had gone red and mottled across her cheeks and forehead. Drogon, behind them, roared, as if sensing his mother’s anger.

Sansa didn’t let it affect her, although she would very much like to vomit her breakfast all over the queen’s dress. 

“I ask for you to let the North go, Queen Daenerys, because we won’t kneel. You can take the North as an ally, or you can take a scorched land.” Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, as though they were going to witness an execution today. Sansa turned her gaze towards Jon, fear and disappointment and anger all mixed with a primer of pride, as if he knew who he was looking at and wished he wasn’t at all. 

“You love my brother,” Sansa continued in the silence. She emphasized the word _brother_. Using Arya’s heroics and the North’s sacrifice had never been her true gambit. She knew it would never be enough.

But the secret of Jon’s parentage? Of him being the true heir of the Iron Throne?

That could be bargained with. 

“Should I be made queen, I could easily erase the existence of his being a bastard. It would make him a prince of Winterfell, and I understand well the advantages of a political marriage.”

Theon’s jaw had fallen open.

Jon looked bemused, as if he were trying to piece together that she had just offered his hand to Daenerys.

A tremor snaked its way through Dany’s words. “He was king before he knelt.”

“But he was never given the name Stark, only that he had Stark blood. I could give him what he never had: a name.”

She could give Jon the name of Stark in exchange for the North, or she could give Jon his true name of Targaryen, and watch the country bleed through continued war on her ashes. 

It was up to Daenerys now.

Jon closed his eyes, breathing out slowly. Dany turned away from Sansa to look at him. They waited for the decision. They knew who it was that warmed the queen’s bed, and they knew she would have to marry. To take consort. And there were so very few princes and nobles left that were marriage material for a queen.

Dany’s smile was far from pretty, violent, all teeth, but it was a smile nonetheless. “Queen Sansa Stark, the First of her Name.”

“Queen Sansa,” came a chorus of awed whispers.

Sansa watched Theon as he mouthed the words.

“Well, this is fun. Three queens, peas in a pod,” Yara Greyjoy barked out, a laugh on her lips as she made her way to Sansa. She gripped her forearm, and Sansa met her stormy face. “Wolves.”

“We’re dangerous,” Sansa agreed. She turned to Dany then, and smiled, triumphant. “Thank you for seeing the right of it, Dany.”

The name came so easily to her tongue, stripping her of her title. She was queen to five kingdoms, sure, but she was still on equal footing as Sansa now. 

“You made a compelling argument, Sansa.”

It was not friendship, and it was not camaraderie, but at least it let loose a tension that had wound its way in Sansa. 

\--

Arya threw her arms around her as soon as they were alone again, a breathless laugh on her lips. "You should have told me."

"Secrets have a funny way of getting out." The embrace was a surprise, but she wrapped her sister into a hug.

"Queen Sansa. It suits you."

Sansa looked down at Arya, messy brown hair and too-serious eyes and a face too young. "I'm sorry."

"Could you repeat that?"

"I thought I knew more and better, and I do--"

Arya stepped away from her with a groan. "Spare me the Sansa High Horse."

"I need you," Sansa said, open and vulnerable and terrified of the reply. She would never understand Arya, and Arya would never understand her, but they were sisters. 

"You know I can tell when someone lies," Arya told her.

"Then you'll know I'm telling you the truth."

It was an offer. A plea for family. 

Arya sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. "What's west of Westeros?"

"Is this a riddle?" Sansa asked. How did they come to this subject? She had just barely scraped out of this summit with her life and her home, and riddles weren’t exactly her area of strength.

“No.”

Arya crossed the room until she came to the window sill, and she took a seat, one leg propped up on the stone. She stared out at the ruins of a once beautiful city. 

Sansa held her arms close to her body, hands on her elbows. “You intend to leave.”

“I talked to Jon about it, briefly. He was surprised, too.”

“Even now?”

When Sansa had won? When she was about to be queen? Of course Arya would run off. She shouldn’t be surprised, but she tried to not be disappointed. 

“I’m obviously going to be there for your coronation, Sansa.” Arya glanced at her. “I’m not an asshole. Much of one, at least,” she amended once she caught Sansa’s look. “And I’ll be back.”

That was as best as she could get, and it was what she would take. She couldn’t chain Arya to her side. 

\--

It had taken some convincing. Jon had plenty of words to say to Sansa, and she had plenty of words to say to him in return. _He_ had put her in this position. _He_ had decided to fall in love with his own aunt and not take care of this problem himself. He called her selfish and spoiled and rotten. He hugged her tightly and told her that he would have gone to war for her. He _had_ gone to war for her.

But going to war over her corpse wouldn’t have solved anything. Sansa was glad it hadn’t actually come to that. 

And besides, she was tired of people telling her what she had done was idiotic. 

Which was why she wanted to speak with Tyrion, which was why she needed Jon to acquire the permission she needed. If anyone could appreciate what she’d done, it’d have been her former husband. 

And here she was, inside of his little room, guarded by two Unsullied. She stared straight ahead as the door closed behind her, leaving her alone with a dwarf in chains.

“Are those really necessary?” she asked him.

He gave her a wan smile. “I tried to tell them it was my tongue that needed shackled, but they haven’t invented those yet.”

“It’s too bad you got yourself caught. You could have.”

He looked so much smaller than she had remembered back in Winterfell, as if grief and imprisonment had sucked the life out of him, day by day. 

“Well, I did throw my pin down the stairs during our queen’s victory speech,” he muttered. He sat heavily in a wooden chair. 

She stood primly, near the door. “Your queen.”

“You can’t still be planning to put Jon on the throne, Sansa. Surely you must know how foolish that is by now. I spoke to him, too. I _told him_ that she needed to be stopped.”

It was hard to imagine Jon killing Daenerys in cold blood, on the word of Tyrion Lannister of all people, and she was glad he hadn’t. 

“No. I used his hand in marriage to secure the North.” She gave him a smile, sharp and biting. “Queen Daenerys only rules five kingdoms from her pointy seat of power.”

He stared at her, slack jawed, as if he couldn’t quite understand what he was hearing. He rubbed his hand over his voice, barking out a dry laugh. “You outmaneuvered her.”

“I have something for you.” Sansa bent over, pulling up her skirts.

“Sansa--”

She pulled out a bottle of wine that she had smuggled into her underclothes, secured by a ribbon. “It was incredibly uncomfortable to walk with it, but thankfully nobody noticed. They’re not going to ask a queen to lift her skirts, after all.”

“You are a gift,” he told her, taking the bottle and holding it close to his chest. 

“Good luck, Tyrion. I hope that she doesn’t execute you,” Sansa told him, and she was surprised by the depth of emotion that welled up in her voice, in her chest. He didn’t deserve to die, but she had pressed her luck enough. 

“If she does, at least my body will now go up in a bonfire.” The glass clinks against the metal of his chains. “Don’t let your guard down just because you’ve won this victory.”

She wouldn’t, but she didn’t need to tell him that. Better to leave the conversation at this, before her heart became soft, before she wondered what she could do for him. There were more important things waiting for her, and she was ready to face them. 

Theon was waiting outside of the room, leaning against the opposite wall. He glared at the guards while they glared right back at him. 

It wasn’t as though she had been avoiding Theon these last couple of days, but she had been avoiding him. He followed her as she walked down the hall, silence enveloping the both of them. They didn’t need any words. Or, well, she didn’t want to hear any words. 

“Are you upset with me?” he finally asked her. 

She remained quiet as they passed by a few people. “This isn’t quite the place for a conversation.”

It shocked her, then, when his fingers wrapped tightly around her wrist. His touch was warm but firm, as he tugged her into a side room that had remained mostly intact but empty. Now she had no choice but to look at him, talk to him, say goodbye. He had finally gotten a haircut, and it looked good on him. Made him look human and alive, little curls shooting off in different directions. His face was clean shaven. She resisted touching his cheek and wondered if he remembered any of the times she had cupped his face when he was recovering. 

“There has just been a lot to do before I leave.” She pressed her lips together. “Why didn’t you tell me yourself you were intending to leave with your sister?”

“I wanted to.”

“And you didn’t.”

“You have been avoiding me, even before you found out.”

That was a fair point. Glancing down, she saw that he still had hold of her. His gaze followed hers, and he quickly let her go. 

“I’ll miss you,” she admitted. “I love my family, but Arya is going to leave, and I can’t really trust Bran.”

He dragged in a breath. She watched his face and the flickering emotions that crossed it. “Yara needs me.”

“I know,” she said softly. Her mouth twisted up into a wry smile. She wanted to tell him that she needed him, too. That not having him around would be so strange when she had become so accustomed to having him around, to needing him around. All of her friendship, all of her trust, had been placed in his hands. 

It was probably not the best place for her to keep them. 

“I’ll write. I’m sure as Yara’s Hand that she’ll want to communicate with the other queens.”

Her hand was on his cheek before she could think about it, soft fingers against smooth skin. She heard him swallow, hard. He held her wrist again, gently now, as if she was made of porcelain. He should have known better.

“Write to me as a friend, not as an extension of the Queen of Salt,” she commanded. 

Theon turned his head, closing his eyes as his lips caressed the palm of her hand. Her heart hammered in her chest, threatening to burst from her ribcage. She couldn’t find the emotion this thread was tied to. Fear? Desire? Loneliness? All of it, gray and muddled and painful. 

She had never thought of Theon as soft before, capable of this kind of touch. He had been _Theon_ and then he had been someone put back together, still Theon, still a little fragile. 

It had been a long time since Sansa had thought of romance and love and what a soft kiss would be like and what a passionate kiss would be like. All of those things had been stolen from her, over and over and over. And she wasn’t even sure if any of those thoughts were what crowded in her head now, because she wasn’t sure that she was thinking.

She just knew that she had stepped into Theon’s space, closer than she had ever been before, her chest brushing against his. She was glad he wasn’t much taller than her, glad he didn’t need to lean down or be pulled down or for her to stand on her toes because it might have made her think twice about what she was doing.

But he was the perfect height.

She kissed him. Her lips eased over his, and she had intended something fleeting. The fluttering of petals against him before she lost her nerve. And it was, at first. Soft. A peck. Something that could have just been between siblings, between friends. But his fingers tightened against her pulse and she knew that he could feel how fast it was. She kissed him again, hard, a need that she had never felt before driving her. 

He kissed her back, his mouth pliant and needy. It was soft and it was breathless and it was _hers_.

She had never taken her own kiss; it had always been her mouth claimed by others. Fumbling, wet, gross, a terror that had felt like rocks in her stomach. 

Sansa pulled back, away from him, giving them both space. She licked her lips, and he followed the line of her tongue before looking into her eyes. 

“My lady,” Theon breathed out, and she could hear the mountain of questions in those words.

“Your Grace, actually,” Sansa corrected.

“I’ll write to you as a friend,” he said. He let go of her wrist finally. Her hand dropped to his shoulder. His hands cupped her face, tilting it up to his, and she wanted it. Him. The kiss. Whatever she had taken. 

His mouth brushed across her forehead, a breezy kiss. 

“You will be a wonderful queen.”

She gave a shaky laugh before pulling him into a tight embrace. He held her close, and she breathed him in. It felt so final, like she would never see him again. But better that than having the knowledge that there was no Theon Greyjoy in the world still.

“You will be a wonderful Hand,” she murmured into his neck. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello!!!! i am back after a quick and unstated hiatus (real life, book stuff, you know how it goes)
> 
> so enjoy this sort of interlude chapter before we head back to king's landing for the wedding of the century

Theon had missed the sea. Every morning after he had returned to Pyke, he made his way to the shoreline, stripped off his shirt, and made his way into the water. Some days, it was choppy. Others, still. Every morning, he was baptized. 

Every morning he thought of Sansa’s lips on his.

The water did nothing to quell that feeling, but it gave him time to think about it. And it was the same argument with himself, again and again. She was queen, he was damaged goods. He could never give her anything that would be expected for her, and he was not even worthy of the memory of her mouth against his. 

The sea lapped up against his feet as he sat in the sand. It had been a few months since King’s Landing, since the Three Queens were crowned. There was a strange sort of peace that wasn’t exactly peaceful that settled like a ripple over the land. He imagined it to be a bandage on a festering wound, but considering his political career was mostly sighing at his sister and being completely ignored and prior to that, being a shit who lost his captured land almost as fast as he took it. To say the least, he wasn’t good at this life. He had been good at fighting once, and mouthing off, and fucking. And now he was good at - 

Brooding.

That was what Yara called it, the silence that overcame him when he couldn’t figure out what it was he wanted to say or do or how he felt. Death had done that to him. Reek had done that to him. 

He was good at keeping to himself, and he was still good at fighting. There were idiots who thought they could take on his sister. And she could take care of herself, there was no doubt. But it kept him in shape. 

“Lord Greyjoy.” A tiny voice called out to him. Very rarely did anyone come out here to bother him. His sister, one of the sailors he had grown close to called Roland. 

This was not a voice he knew, and when he glanced over his shoulder, it belonged to a girl he also didn’t know. She was young, baby fat still clinging to her round face. Her blonde hair was wind whipped, the color of straw. Her clothes were plain, clean, pants and a tunic top that was too loose in the collar.

“Lord Greyjoy, a letter arrived for you.” In her hand, she held a sealed note. “I know you don’t like to be bothered, but the queen said you would want to know.” She smiled at him, a queer curve of her mouth. Her lips trembled. 

He took all of that in as if his own senses had been heightened. He could hear the call of gulls off of the waves and the men working on building the ships and he could see the unease in the girl’s entire body as if she was carved straight out of it. 

But mostly, he took in the seal. Direwolves. In his pocket, as if he could feel it burning into his skin, was the pin with the same emblem on it.

Sansa. Queen in the North. They hadn’t exchanged any communication since leaving King’s Landing, and maybe that was the need for his brooding. He missed her the way he missed the sea, and he knew he shouldn’t have. Queen in the North, a direwolf and winter through and through. And he was a pathetic little worm not good for much, yet somehow the women in his life kept him around.

The girl shifted her feet, waiting for him to do anything. When Theon jumped to his feet, she jumped back, not expecting such a sudden movement from him. 

“Thank you,” he said, taking two long strides and reaching his hand out for the letter. It was Sansa. She had written to him. She had kept in contact. She wanted to talk to him.

And he felt embarrassed by his own joy. Pathetic. He was lovestruck. 

Dark eyes stared up at him, wide and wide set. She ran off as soon as the letter was out of her hand, and he didn’t bother to watch her go. His hands shook as he focused his gaze on the letter. 

He took care to rip through the direwolf seal, wishing he could keep it intact and knowing that was ridiculous. Her handwriting was prim and elegant, and he really expected nothing less from Sansa Stark. His own sister’s handwriting was messy and curt, and she had plenty of advisors having to rewrite her letters to the best of their abilities. He smoothed his thumb over the curled ink that spelled his name.

_Theon_. 

She was the one who had called him that, that reminded him of who he was when she decided they had to run. She wouldn’t leave him. More like, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t have been able to without him. How strange it was to have come this far and know they didn’t need each other for support any longer. 

_Theon,_

_I have never really had many people to write letters to before, and when I had, I was a child living in King’s Landing. So I must apologize for the delay in this one. It’s different, isn’t it, to live in a world that is so much different than the one we grew up in? I can’t help but feel that we are balancing on the edge of a knife point. One wrong move, and we can be cut._

_I brought that up to Bran once, and he merely stared at me with his empty gaze. I think he knows something, but I’m too afraid to ask what it is._

_Is it wrong of me to be tired? Is it wrong of me to lay that on you? I would talk with Arya or Ser Brienne, but they are both very different from me. There’s an air of grief that lays underneath the atmosphere of Winterfell’s rebirth. There has been so much death, too many traumas and disappointments and tragedies to really fill anyone with joy. The children are quieter. My brother and sister have come back home put together oddly._

_I am put together oddly._

_But we are trudging forward. I have to. I have promised them a future, and I intend to give it to the North. There is so much emptiness here, and I can’t stand it. I can’t stand what has happened to our home. First, Winterfell needs to be rebuilt, and then there are lands and titles and houses that have to be rebuilt._

_And a wedding to prepare for. I know that I orchestrated it, but I don’t wish to give Jon over to the Dragon Queen. I wish to bring him home, where he belongs. With me. With Arya. With Bran. With the bones of our father that still rest in the crypts. Or I pray they do, because believing that he had been taken over by the Night King is too much to bare._

_Please do forgive me for not reaching out sooner. I have missed you, Theon. You are my only true friend in this world._

_Yours,_

_Sansa_

He read that last part over and over. Yours. Yours. Did she know what she wrote? She must have. She was a clever woman. She understood what words meant.

\--

Arya groaned and let her head thunk against the desk, face buried in the wood. This wasn’t the first time Sansa’s sister had dramatically emphasized how much she hated the boring bits of ruling. It wouldn’t be the last. Arya had, and always would be, all action. 

Sansa, on the other hand, shuffled through what seemed like endless calls for monetary support. It was her own fault. She had opened her door, so to speak, for what she could do to build infrastructure in the North again. Instead what she had managed to get were cries of help. She knew they needed it. And she was trying to provide it as efficiently as she could. With so many families that had been wiped out, there were homes she could give. But she understood that traditions held firm, and she couldn’t give common folk titles without upsetting the families that did still stand. Homes, destroyed. Food, eaten. 

And Arya was trying to meld in with her desk. 

She threw a quill at her sister and watched the feather bounce off of her dark hair. “You said you would help me.”

“I said I would keep you from assassination attempts, and I have.” Arya finally lifted her head, both eyebrows arched as she stared Sansa down. “Twice.”

“And I do appreciate that, but I don’t think that soup was meant to be poisoned. It was just--”

“Filled with enough salt to choke the new queen?”

Sansa pressed her lips together. “Not assassination, merely terrible cooking.”

“Why doesn’t Glover just handle all of this? He’s your Lord of Coin.”

“We don’t have a Lord of Coin,” Sansa chided. She shuffled through her papers, trying to organize the letters into different piles. Most needy, ideas, least important. “I’m queen, and I should be able to handle these matters.”

“Sansa, I love you, but you do you actually know how to run anything?” Arya’s voice wasn’t unkind, but the question stung nonetheless. 

She wasn’t sure if she did. She had learned at the seats of Cersei and Littlefinger and Ramsay, but she also had a few lessons from her father and mother. She had been raised to be a lady, to run her husband’s household. But there was no husband. There would be _no_ husband, although she was not quick to let that policy be known. Several letters had been fed to the fire containing proposals. Lord Glover had attempted to position his eldest son as a candidate. ‘For king.’

There would be no king in the North whose name was not Stark, and she would bend to nobody.

They stared each other down, dark eyes meeting blue, and neither woman would flinch away. Arya’s lips quirked into a lopsided smile, as if she knew a secret Sansa did not. She wouldn’t have been surprised. Arya was her spymaster, the shadow that lived. 

“Do you actually know how to sail?” Sansa asked in return. 

She shrugged and grinned, something small and just a tad bit unnerving. “I’ll learn.”

Sansa had hoped she could talk her sister out of her journey. First, Arya had stayed for the coronation. And then she had stayed to watch Sansa’s back while she found her footing. And she would stay for Jon’s wedding, because she couldn’t miss that. Nobody would dare miss that. 

But then Arya would be gone, and Sansa would be alone with the ghosts and with Bran.

“I think that was the first time you have ever said you loved me, little sister,” Sansa pointed out.

Arya looked almost owlish, with her eyes wide. She had been caught off-guard, whether by Sansa or herself, she couldn’t tell. It was just nice to see that her sister was just that much more human again. “I did not.”

“You did.” She smiled, letting her face relax into it, letting her body relax into the moment. 

“I knew all of this work would drive me insane,” she muttered. 

They were becoming a family again, and that more than anything was warming Sansa again. She felt, not necessarily like the girl she used to be, but as though she could be someone who wasn’t wrapped in ice. 

“Perhaps getting out of this room would help,” Sansa suggested.

Arya was up before the words were even fully out of her mouth, chair scraping the floor as it teetered for a moment and landed back on all four of its legs. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

“You’re welcome, _princess_.”

Arya made a face, mouth puckered up as if she had sucked on a lemon freshly plucked, a bit of her tongue poking out from between her lips. “Don’t.”

“I do wish you would wear your diadem, as befitting your--”

“I will escape out of the window if you finish any of this, and then you will have to explain to your people why.”

A million and one years ago, that would have been so utterly embarrassing to Sansa. She would have turned as red as her hair, heat burning beneath her skin as she wished that she could drop her perfect facade and just unleash her fury. Now? Now she laughed, a sound so soft, it almost was a sigh. 

“I wouldn’t want that,” Sansa agreed. “Go on, Arya.”

Once alone, Sansa stared out of the window that her sister had just threatened to leave out of. Leaving her queendom now was a terrible idea, but she couldn’t risk slighting the one woman in the world with a dragon already known to burn cities to ashes. Lord Glover had brought to her the idea of exchanging the Dreadfort with the Iron Bank for gold. It was a good idea. She would be pleased to rid herself of the Dreadfort and any remaining signs of House Bolton. But it would open up the North to possibly sheltering the Golden Company.

She wasn’t sure how it would look to the other queens if she was host to a mercenary army, especially one that had been led by Euron Greyjoy in service to Cersei. 

The loan would be useful, however. It would allow her to begin trading to bring in food again, after the armies had left Winterfell near barren. She could build ships, and she could rebuild Winterfell.

She would need to gather the lords and bring it up so they could come to a decision together. This would affect all of the North, and she didn’t want to be accused of being the Queen that destroyed them so quickly. 

Sansa wrapped her arms around her midsection, leaning back in her seat. Had her father sat here, worried about these same things? Or at least, similar? Had Bran the Builder or all the kings that had come after him? Her teeth worried a groove into her bottom lip. 

She would need to tour the country as well. She needed her people to see that she was not an untouchable ruler, that she was here for them. Of course, she knew that Arya and Brienne would protest this. While they might have joked about the salty soup being an assassination attempt, there really had been one on her life before that. She remembered the hollow fear that had sung in her veins when the arrow hissed by her ear. It had taken a chunk of it off, carving a crescent into her left ear. 

The blood had been worse than the pain. She was used to pain. 

He had been young, the would-be assassin, from a corner of the North that was more part of the Targaryen kingdoms than her own. A woman had not been his choice, and she supposed out of all the queens he could attack, she was the most vulnerable. 

Ned Stark had been a just man, but also firm. Too fair. He would have told her that to pass judgement, she would have to carry out the punishment. But a sword had never sat well in Sansa’s delicate hands, and there was a hunger in Arya’s eyes that she knew could be her own anger given form. 

Arya had carried out the punishment, drawing Needle’s sharp edge across the young man’s throat with no hesitation.

She was lost in her own thoughts, of all the things that had been and would be, when the sharp caw of the crow brought her back to reality. The bird perched on the windowsill, a letter still in its beak.

Without getting up, without even seeing the seal, the beat of her heart told her everything she needed to know about where that letter had come from. She could almost smell the salt of the sea in the air. 


	9. Chapter 9

Yara rubbed her temples. She typically did not stress about problems because problems, for the Queen of the Iron Islands, were a nonissue. Someone dissented, she broke their nose. Or Theon broke their nose, depending on his busy she was. Their father had raised her to be the heir, but Theon wasn’t sure how much of the ruling his sister understood. Or perhaps, it was more like, she had no idea what being a queen had meant. 

It happened to the best of them. He hadn’t known what it would mean to be Lord of Winterfell, and he had done a shit job of it. A very shit job. 

Dark circles under her eyes and the permanent lines around her mouth that dipped down, down, down told him a million little things about strong, fierce Yara Greyjoy. 

“I’m still trying to build this fucking island up and punching cocks that don’t bend the knee to a _woman_ , and she _thinks_ now is the time for a marriage?”

Theon rested his chin on his fist, having long ago lost his appetite. A knife was stabbed into a thick cut of a fish, tilted at an angle, on his sister’s plate. Her hair was a tangled mess, wind whipped and not at all the coif that he could picture Sansa’s hair being right now. 

Yara was more king than queen, but he didn’t have the balls to tell her that. 

“She isn’t going to wait to marry Jon Snow,” Theon said. 

“Stark,” Yara reminded him.

It was strange to think of Jon Snow as a Stark now, even though he was the most Stark of them all. As if he had been born only of Ned Stark, a copy of the man he had known as father better than his own. But Jon Snow, his brother and friend and enemy, was just Jon Snow to him. He couldn’t be a Stark anymore than Theon could.

But he kept those thoughts to himself, the way he kept so many to himself. 

“Securing her throne and her rule with marriage to a well known man from a well known, respected family is smart.”

Yara grabbed her knife and sliced her fish with it. “Are you trying to tell me that I need to _secure_ my throne?”

Theon blinked at her. He could smile, but those were rare for him. He could frown, but the question didn’t really make him upset or uncertain. It just was. It was a genuine question for him to think over, as brother to the queen, as Hand to the queen.

“Yara, nobody could force you to marry.”

She seemed satisfied with that. “And besides, my men know me.”

“They know you’ll take care of them,” Theon agreed. “She burned down a city.”

“That still bother you?”

He wasn’t sure. In her place - no, he _had_ been in her place. And he had killed too many people that hadn’t deserved to die in the name of conquest. So, no, not really. He didn’t give a shit about the people of King’s Landing and he didn’t give a shit about the Lannisters.

“It didn’t bother me to begin with,” he said. “The rest of the people?”

Yara watched him. She watched him a lot, he noticed. He couldn’t blame her for that; he had made too many mistakes to be fully trusted, to be fully understood. Coward, he thought. He was yellow bellied, a disgrace, unfit for his position. 

“So she has to marry Jon Stark for the _people_ , and if it happens to undermine me or the Wolf Bitch, so be it.”

“Don’t call her that.”

She tossed her head, that haughty smirk of hers a ghostly remnant of a past he wanted to desperately wash away in the salt. “The only time I can get you pissed off is when I say something about her. You know that Wolf Bitch is just my friendly pet name for her, don’t you?”

“That isn’t funny, Yara, and you don’t know her.”

Her grin now was sharp. “Baby brother, you have to keep control of yourself. People will begin to talk.”

“I don’t care what people say, as long as it isn’t about her.”

He had tried - and failed - to explain to Yara the significance that Sansa held for him, outside of his feelings. The problem was that there was no “outside” of his feelings. If he didn’t love her, care for her, wanted to protect her, then she wouldn’t matter. No, she would, but as a figure from his past, a surrogate sister who had no time for him or anyone else. 

“Whatever.” Yara waved him off. She would tease him, but she would accept what she couldn’t understand. “The point being, inviting us means we cannot slight her.”

“Sansa would have to be there, regardless. It’s her brother.”

“And yet, it leaves our struggling kingdoms unattended. Hers moreso than ours.”

He knew who she meant. Sansa’s. The North. It had been hard hit by the Night King and the wights and again when its army had to march south. It had been hard hit by him and the absence of Starks and Ramsay Bolton. It had been hard hit by winter and Sansa caring for everyone that came to Winterfell’s walls, regardless of who they were and where they came from.

“Yara, you’re paranoid.”

She rolled her eyes and took a bite of her dinner. 

\--

Gendry tugged at his uncomfortably tight collar. His hands itched to work with metal and fire and the forge again, and instead, he had to mess with his collars and wedding invitations and the thought of seeing Arya again. 

“Stop fussing,” Davos told him. 

Gendry dropped his arms. They felt awkward at his sides, so he crossed them over his chest instead. He dropped them again. 

“Why didn’t you tell the tailor that it didn’t fit?” But the way the old man said it, he knew he was being made fun of. As if _he_ had any room. Davos was a lord himself, as out of place in the nobility as Gendry himself.

But Gendry had been the bastard of a king. Davos had kindly reminded him of that. There was nothing special in his own blood; it had simply been circumstance and respect. It had taken him a few weeks, but Gendry had finally asked about his uncle. He didn’t care, not really. The man had tried to kill him! Family or not, Gendry supposed he wasn’t meant to be _okay_ with that particular issue. As if he had asked to be Robert Baratheon’s bastard. As if any of them had, but that never stopped anyone from trying to eradicate them from the world. 

Gendry did care about Davos Seaworth, and Davos Seaworth had loved Stannis Baratheon. So he had asked, and he had learned of his family. 

Gendry Baratheon had only one thought about the families of Westeros: there was something _very_ wrong with them. He didn’t want to be part of that legacy. He wasn’t sure if he should trust Daenerys Targaryen, but she had been the one to legitimize him and Storm’s End was still part of the Five Kingdoms. The Baratheons were loyal to the crown.

The Baratheons being - well, Gendry only. Very awkward, considering he was in love with a princess from the Northern Kingdom. Was that considered treason?

He would have asked Davos that, but he was laughed at enough without bringing love up. Or his failed proposal. 

Sweat dripped down his back, making his skin itchy. “I look like a jester.”

She had rejected him when she was merely a lady.

“You look like a lord. Which is the point,” Davos told him, placing his hands on Gendry’s shoulders. He was a little shorter than Gendry, a lot older, wearier. “You are part of the Great Houses of Westeros, boy. You have to look the part.”

“It’s just a wedding,” Gendry muttered, looking over Davos’ shoulder to see his reflection in the mirror. A jester looked better than him, he was wrong. Large stags had been sewn into the shoulders of his jacket in golden thread. The jacket was sleek and black and would have been fairly attractive if not for the gold signs pointing out that he was the son of a usurper. His face flushed red, skin laid bare after he had been forced to keep shaving off his beard. Robert had a beard. Davos had a beard. Why did he have to be clean shaven?

His attendant, Ronald Rivers, had said it was because he looked like he had just rolled in mud and came from the slums. 

Leave it to one bastard to tell another about the importance of presentation.

“The wedding of our queen to our friend. Both of whom we have bent the knee to,” Davos said. 

Ah.

Yes.

“And I am a brightly lit stag because…?”

“Queen Daenerys has personally requested this.”

They had gone over this same conversation about five times now, for a week, ever since they had first received the letter about his attire for the wedding. It almost felt like a punishment. Why would he be punished? He had done as she wanted; bent the knee, accepted his lands, taken his name. Lord of Storm’s End. 

All he really wanted was to take Arya in his arms and beg her to take him wherever she was going. Because he knew her enough - maybe not well enough, maybe not everything - to know that she wouldn’t be able to sit still at her sister’s side. It wasn’t in her. Hadn’t that been why she didn’t want to marry him? She wasn’t a lady.

And she wasn’t a princess.

And he didn’t want to be a lord any longer. Let Davos become a Baratheon. Let one of his sons inherit the name and the lands and the legacy that would always make him a target in a Targaryen reign.

At least, that was what Ronald said.

Ronald seemed to understand a little bit more about nobles than himself. 

\--

Ghost whined. 

The wolf usually did not whine. He was as silent as his name. 

Tormund laid a hand on his large head, dirty fingers running through the thick white fur. Ghost leaned into the touch, the whines dying in the back of his throat. He’d never been very good at understanding what was wrong with animals. He wasn’t one of those damn greenseers. Didn’t get to put his soul inside of Ghost’s and see what it was that the wolf was feeling. 

“What’s wrong, big boy, hm?” 

Those quiet red eyes turned to look up at him. 

He wasn’t a greenseer. But he didn’t need any fucking magic powers to know that it was about Jon Snow. 

“Damn Crow has always been an idiot,” he muttered.

Tormund had a lot of hope that Jon Snow would have travelled up north again, beyond the wall to where he belonged when the wars were over. Crow, Wildling. Didn’t matter the name, but it was what Jon Snow had always been. Time had passed. No Crow.

There was a sadness that accompanied that thought. An emptiness in Tormund Giantsbane where laughter had been and mirth and the joy that came with living. It wasn’t as though he didn’t still do these things, felt these things. It was just that since that moment he had climbed the Wall and crossed over, everything had gone to shit. 

Having someone by his side that he could lead the Wildlings with would have been nice. And yeah, sometimes he still went to bed thinking of the big woman and their big children, but that wasn’t the fantasy that kept him afloat.

It was Jon Snow whose fingers stroked Ghost’s fur and helped to rebuild the Wildlings again in their true home. 

\--

“I’m packing my faces.”

Some words should not have been able to be strung together in a sentence that actually made sense, and these were some of them. 

Sansa kept her face carefully blank, as if her sister could steal it from simply making some expression. She wasn’t sure how it worked, this faceless thing. And quite honestly, she didn’t even want to. Arya’s secrets were her own. She could have those ones. 

“Do you think that’s necessary?” 

Most conversations between them were mostly a staring contest, neither of them blinking. Sansa lost most days. She was strong, made of iron and steel and snow, but Arya was something more. 

“You’re the Hero of Winterfell,” Sansa said. She was not good at staring, but she was good at gentle words and sweet reminders. “Sister of a queen.”

“And your knife in the back,” Arya reminded her. 

She couldn’t lie and say that she had no worries stepping back into King’s Landing. Once had ended in tragedy, and twice had been luckier than Sansa had ever been. Only the gods, new and old, knew what lay in store for her - or Arya - if they went south again. 

The last time, she promised herself. It would be the last time she left Winterfell. 

Starks don’t fair well at weddings, either. 

But she didn’t believe Daenerys to be an idiot. Killing her at her wedding to Jon would be a foolish move. 

“Fine, bring your faces.” 

Sansa found herself roaming until she came to the godswood. It still held a different energy than it used to, heavy and quieter than she would have liked. Her fingers skimmed along the bark of the tree, and there was a humming that rose to meet her touch. The atmosphere was dark because of her perceptions of it now. This is where the Night King had met his end. This is where Theon had laid bleeding after protecting her brother. This is where Bran had seen the end and the beginning.

But that sweet thrum reminded her that there was peace here, too. There was love. Her parents had prayed at this tree and they had played under its branches as kids. She had read books of knights and princesses falling in love. 

Softly, so gently that it was a whisper of skin against bark, Sansa pressed her forehead to the face of the tree’s. 

Protect us, please. Watch over Jon and Arya and myself in the court of the Dragon Queen. Let this have been the right choice to make.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so many apologies, friends!!!! real life is crazy but i have an outline and a plan and i hope to be back on a regular schedule for realsies this time

There was one bright spot to returning to King's Landing, hopefully for the final time. Keeping Theon off of her mind had been a difficult task in these few months. She thought of his friendship and the comfort it was to have him around. She thought of that embarrassing kiss, the way she had thrown herself at him. 

Sansa hoped that he didn't hold it against her. If he brought it up, she would have to explain herself and there was no real good answer. There would be a million explanations. But she knew him as she knew herself and he wouldn't bring it up. His letters had been soothing and well written and full of nonsense words that did not touch her heart and warm her belly. She still thought of him anyway, the only man in the world she could trust.

The only _person_ she could trust.

Brienne let out the tiniest of sighs as she shifted in her saddle. She had been unusually quiet along the way. Which wasn't unusual in itself because Brienne of Tarth was not chatty in nature. It was why Sansa loved her. One of the reasons. And thinking that now, as Podrick filled their silence with happy talk, Sansa hadn't realized that she did love her knight, as a friend and protector. 

"Is it hard returning knowing he died?" Sansa found herself saying. It sounded cold but she wasn't called the Winter Queen just because of her location.

She was fully aware that it was her words that likely drove Jaime Lannister to leave, but she didn't feel guilt for it. He deserved it, but not Brienne.

"It just isn't home, and we have too many unknown enemies."

"It would be easier to have them known," Sansa agreed. Part of her was sure, without any doubts, that it was Daenerys. Whom else could it be? Would there be anyone else so full of rage and hate?

But another part of her didn't believe it. In her place, that wasn't how Sansa would attack a perceived enemy.

Sansa was not a conqueror however.

"Killing me at my own brother's wedding would be an interesting tactic," she mused. Her voice was soft, too low to carry on the wind.

Brienne's pale brow was furrowed at her words. "What?"

Brienne was not a strategist.

"Let us say the Dragon Queen isn't our enemy. What better way to choke her fragile hold than by committing the ultimate dishonor?"

She kept her cool exterior, but she had to admit to herself that she was afraid. Dying was no longer part of her plans, and being taken out by an unknown factor seemed so pointless. It was the same kind of fear she had during every battle she found herself in. Only this time, she couldn't cower. 

"I don't like these sort of ploys," Brienne admitted, breaking Sansa out of her thoughts. 

"Not all of us can be as straightforward as you." Sansa placed her gloved hand over Brienne's. She could feel the chill in her fingers, even through the gloves Sansa had made her. "It would make the world too good of a place."

“I don’t see how that could possibly be an issue.”

No. She supposed not. Brienne didn’t say it in a way that sounded naive, not like a little girl dreaming. It was a wish, spoken from a broken heart. 

There was so much beauty that resided in Brienne of Tarth, and it was rather unfortunate that only _Jaime Lannister_ could prove that to her. Everything about this damned world was a tragedy.

With an awkward pat, Brienne took her hand back, a grimace of a smile stretching across her broad face.

“What if your assumption is wrong?” she asked to fill the silence.

Sansa now knew that the idea of infallibility was the reason why two great and so-called intelligent men had been executed. To believe yourself the top of the food chain was a fool’s errand. And she had already played that gamble. She had played many gambles, showed many hands, and was just hoping that her next step was the right thing for the North. So she took a deep and stared ahead at the melting snows of the south. White and green, life shooting through the dead. 

“Then the Game begins again.”

\--

Arya sat in a tavern, drinking some rotten ale that must have been caught in some of the fires and explosions of King’s Landing’s destruction. It was sour on her tongue, and it took every fiber of her being to not make a face. A man such as her face, fat and wrinkled and old, wouldn’t shy away from the drink, no matter how much like garbage it tasted. Men should have had better taste. More discerning taste. But instead, she sat here, leering at a serving girl pouring at another table. Best to keep up the charade. 

Chatter was sparse, as was the clientele. To be expected, she supposed. It wasn’t as though this was one of the better taverns; it had merely been one that had been mostly spared in the battle. A chunk of wall was missing, stone caving in itself in a way that reminded her of a drunk heaving up. She could have gone somewhere more crowded. She could have been where the people were, the lords and ladies and fancy little lads forced to come to the city to witness the wedding of all weddings. 

A Stark and a Targaryen. 

A match made in the seven hells. 

A match that Sansa had made. 

There were so many things that Arya couldn’t agree with her sister about. This one had been the cruelest betrayal, in her opinion. They could have been happy in Winterfell, all of them. That was how it was supposed to be. It was what she had fought for, why she had left the Faceless Men. And Sansa had took it in her own hands, throwing Jon away so easily. 

She loved her sister. They could be friends, perhaps. She trusted her, for the most part. She even understood why Sansa had done it; this was the only way to take back home with the least amount of bloodshed. Still, it was at the expense of the _pack_.

Her fingers tightened on her glass, round knuckles pink and white. 

“I heard the three queens would all be here,” a man at another table said. His words slurred, blending together so that it was hard for Arya to pick out the pieces. “Bets on who dies first.”

“It ain’t as though there’s any weight to hospitality rules no more. Not since the Freys killed all them Starks.”

The serving girl rolled her eyes. “There were only three Starks there.”

Arya drank, forcing her shoulders to relax. 

“That’s plenty of wolves,” the first man said. He laughed and shook his cup at the girl. “Fill ‘er on up, Daisy.”

“Aye, but now a wolf is a queen. And a dragon is a queen. And a damn fish.”

“It’s a squid, you moron.”

“Kraken,” Arya found herself saying. “The Iron Islands are represented by a kraken.”

“The hell is that?” the drunk man asked. 

“It’s a _squid_ ,” the second man said. 

She could argue, but her energy was best left to drinking swill and keeping her ears open. So she shrugged. The men shrugged.

“I tell you what, my bets are on Stark,” the serving girl said. She had one hip popped out to the side, a slight smile on her lips. “She’s kept herself alive this long.”

The first man let his head fall back as he laughed, a sharp bark of a sound that made Arya grit her teeth. “By spreading her legs, no doubt. Married twice, and now she thinks she can take a man’s place.”

“I’d love to show her a man’s place.” The second man spread his legs and grabbed his crotch, bucking his hips up into the air. 

“Jeremy, you’d have to be a man to show anyone a man’s place,” the girl muttered. She rolled her eyes at the men before walking off. 

“Bitch,” Jeremy grunted. He was greasy looking, as if he hadn’t showered in a couple of months. His hair was cut choppy, like little brown strings that clung to his scalp. When he smiled, when he talked, Arya could see that he was missing a few teeth and that ones that remained were stained an awful brown. His nose was rather small for his face, eyes too far apart. Round about the middle, but lanky elsewhere. 

He could make an interesting face. 

Arya leaned back in her chair. It groaned under the weight of her body, the wood sagging in places wood should not sag. “I hear an attempt was made on the wolf bitch’s life.”

Jeremy looked at her sharply. His drunk friend merely smiled. He was more put together, as if he had recently scrubbed away the grime from his skin. His head was shaved, knicked in a few places, and had the telltale scabs of a man who recently got rid of his lice. Interesting. When he smiled, his brown eyes looked just a little less murky, a little more lifelike. 

“Ain’t surprised and all,” the man said. “She’s an uppity one, from what I hear.”

“They all are,” Jeremy scoffed. “Women in power won’t do us a lick of good. As if Westeros ain’t had enough bullshit without all this. Next thing you know, they’ll be closing up the whorehouses!”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t you worry. We got a Stark man as king. He’ll fix things.”

“Wesley, you buffoon,” Jeremy drawled. “He was from the Night’s Watch. Probably cockless.”

These idiots, Arya decided, knew nothing of substance. They just spewed the same rhetoric she had already been coated in the past several months. 

She waited, nursing her ale, until they both stumbled out of the tavern. Wesley stumbled to the right of the street and passed out. Jeremy took a piss.

Arya took his face.

\--

A knock came at her chamber door. Sansa exchanged a glance with Brienne. Death had been a sweet promise once. Now it seemed to want to darken her every move, and she wished it wouldn’t. There were times, at night, like a prayer, she would take her sister’s words.

_Not today_.

A knock shouldn’t have made her feel so fearful. But one of the assassins had knocked, too. And had asked for safe harbor after delivering a message. 

No, she had to believe that nothing would happen here. Not this time. Not this wedding.

Brienne opened the door, her figure blocking the slight one in front of her. 

“Ser Brienne.”

“Lord Greyjoy.”

Sansa stood from her seat, abandoning her cup of tea. He had arrived. He was here.

Brienne stepped back, allowing Theon to step into the room without invitation. He seemed to realize that, took a step back, and let his eyes focus on a piece of Sansa’s. Her chin, maybe. Her ear? All she knew was that he still had trouble meeting her gaze, and a part of her heart squeezed. 

“May I have a word, Your Grace?” he asked her. Or her chin. Or her ear. 

“Theon.” Formalities, be damned, in the comfort of her solitude. 

At the sound of his name, he met her gaze. He looked good. He had rounded those sharp bits of his out again, good food replacing what she knew bad sleep took. Her gaze traveled over him shamelessly, and she told herself it was simply to check up on him. She had held his dying body. She had held his broken body. She was allowed to see how he was doing and nevermind the fact that his arms looked as if he had been training again and that his clothes were fresh and fit just right. 

He had shaved.

She found that she quite missed the beard. 

She found that she never realized how handsome he was to her, even with the sorrow that bent his shoulders and twisted his lips. 

A foolish girl would have given in to her impulses and rushed to him, throwing her weight against him. A foolish queen took swift strides to meet him in the middle of the room as he had been moving towards her at the same time. 

He smelled of the sea. His hair had grown longer, ticking his neck and threatening to envelope his collar. 

“Sansa.” Her name was a croak. 

“I see you’re wearing your pin.” She reached her hand out to tap his chest, where the Stark wolf rested. 

His smile was a soft curve, but his eyes lit up. “Yara wasn’t pleased.”

“Is she ever?” 

“Depends on who’s in her bed.”

Sansa’s cheeks flamed immediately before she coughed up an awkward laugh. “Yes, I suppose - well, that wasn’t what I meant.”

“I know, but it’s nice to see that there is more than ice in the Wolf Queen,” he murmured. A hand rested on her shoulder. His fingers twitched. 

“You’ve heard the rumors,” Sansa muttered. 

“I’ve heard the rumors.”

Behind Theon, nearly forgotten, Brienne cleared her throat. Theon’s hand dropped as he whipped his head in her direction. Sansa peered around him. 

“Should I leave?”

“No,” came their simultaneous reply. 

Sansa didn’t mistake the dubious look her knight gave to her, but she chose to ignore it. Theon was her friend, her confidant. She threw her arms around his neck and pulled him close to her in an embrace and tried to forget the kiss the last time they were this close. 

“I don’t believe any of them,” he whispered, breath tickling her ear before he pressed his face into her shoulder.


	11. Chapter 11

“You should come home.” 

Arya was, in particular Arya fashion, sitting on a windowsill that overlooked the ruins. One knee was drawn close to her chest. Her other leg dangled and swung, the heel of her boot scuffing the stone wall. 

She looked so much like the little girl Jon had left behind with a small sword all those years ago, that he almost agreed. He _should_ come home. He should have _never_ left home. Not to join the Wall, not to kneel in front of Daenerys, not to destroy.

But he had.

They had all left home, and sometimes, there was just no going back from that. 

So he managed to drudge up a smile for her, tired at the corners as it was. Her glare was intense. A lot of things about Arya were intense, he’d learned. 

“I am home,” Jon reminded his little sister.

She glanced around the hollow room, so cold and still sporting colors of red and gold, as if they were seared into the very walls themselves. Lions could be killed but they lingered. “Ghost isn’t here.”

“He’s in the North.”

“Where you belong.”

Yes. Far north, above the wall and among the wildlings that had felt more like home than even Winterfell ever could. He wasn’t a Stark. He wasn’t a Targaryen. He was a _Snow_. How he wished to be a Snow again. 

His shoulders slumped, his hand coming up to rub the beard he had let grow wildly out of place among this court. Dany told him she loved it. She would spend hours with her hands in it, braiding it over and over again. She wasn’t entirely there when she did, and he could sometimes pretend that he wasn’t either. 

Love was strange. Painful. Binding. 

There were dark circles under Arya’s eyes, as if she hadn’t slept in days. Her hair was brushed back neatly, however, and tied off at the nape of her neck. Her face was clean, scrubbed pink. There was dirt under her nails, a twitch at the corner of her mouth, and she wouldn’t stop kicking the wall. 

Jon found himself sinking slowly into one of the chairs in the room; he tried to not hunch over. Marriage was duty. He could be dutiful. He could also be less than dutiful. Dany was beautiful, smart, wicked. There was good in her, so deeply rooted in her beliefs that she couldn’t see where she went wrong and why she went wrong and why she seemed incapable of keeping nobody around. He loved her. She was his queen; he had chosen that, hadn’t he? Before the kingdom lines were redrawn and maps thrown into the rubbish, he had chosen her.

He knew he would always choose her.

Because he loved his sisters, too. 

Arya scowled. “Sansa did this. She never liked you growing up, and this is her punishment.”

That brought an actual smile to his face. “Oh? She keeps you close, and she didn’t like you.”

“It’s my punishment, being stuck with her all the time.”

There was no barb to it, though. He could sense her distaste with the arrangement, sure. He still held his own ember of anger towards Sansa. She played them all as if there weren’t lives on the line, stakes to lose. She had gambled already, and look at what had happened when it didn’t work out in her favor. 

In the end, she had gotten exactly what she wanted. 

But Arya’s biggest qualm with Sansa seemed to be simply this: Starks divided. 

He could read it on her face, letting her many masks slip off. “You could leave.”

She snorted. “Her and Bran are smart. But they’re useless as tits on a man.” She wasn’t going to say that she needed them as well. It wasn’t her style. 

“I love Dany, Arya.”

Truly, but not deeply. Deeply belonged to a girl kissed by fire and the cold and the wolves. 

“Maybe,” Arya relented. “Sansa still did this. She broke our family up.”

“So did I.”

A night hadn’t passed when he didn’t dream of Rickon. 

She pinned him down with her stare, dark eyes murky and unreadable. “So, marriage? Whose name are you going to take?”

\--

Finding herself surrounded by a majority of unfriendly faces had a profound effect on Daenerys Targaryen. It had been a long time since she had been with friends or at least people that cared for her, loved her. Jon and Grey Worm had a constant competition on who could have the longest face, and neither was quite the conversationalist.

She missed Missandei. 

She missed Tyrion and Varys, too. 

There were days where she regretted her decisions. They were few and far apart, and the feeling never lasted long, but she had to accept that she made these decisions. That they were for the _best_. Allowing treason to fester and spread wasn’t going to win her the throne, and if she couldn’t trust someone, then why keep them around?

She stared down in the murky depths of her tea, longing to climb onto Drogon and fly. She missed the freedom. 

Weddings were meant to be joyful. She loved Jon. This was _her choice_ , even if it looked as though she hadn’t had much say in it. Sansa Stark had played her cards well. She seemed more of a threat than Cersei had ever been, locked away in the walls she now lived in. It was really too bad that Dany couldn’t have personally seen to her end, to have taken a blade and sawed at her neck until she was satisfied. 

Being crushed was too good a death. 

No, joyful. She was getting married. She had to hold onto that and not old hates. Not for Cersei, not for Sansa. Not for herself or for men or for Jon’s parents. 

“You’re looking rather thin lately. They don’t feed the queen here in King’s Landing?” Yara leaned forward, elbow on the table and her chin resting against her knuckles. 

Dany gave her a twist of a smile. “I burned the food.”

An oversight, of course. Rage had flowed through her veins, fire replacing blood. Now she and her people were paying for it, bit by bit. Between war and winter, it was becoming difficult.

“Tough luck there.”

She ate. But food tasted of ash on the best of days. She knew that there was something behind that, something in her that made it hard to eat. Really, it was a terrible time for a wedding. Tyrion would have told her to make it a small affair. 

“I have to ask you something,” Dany found herself saying. 

Yara arched an eyebrow. “Sounds serious.”

“What do you make of Sansa?”

The sloppy grin on Yara’s face was replaced by a more sober look as she sat up and back against her seat. “I can’t say I know her beyond my brother’s association.”

Dany remembered the way that Theon Greyjoy had all but ignored her in favor of the Lady of Winterfell, his eyes bright and worshipping. “And what do you think?”

“A cockless fool and a frigid queen make for quite the song.” Yara sighed. “If you think you have anything to worry about from her, my opinion is no. I’m more of a threat to you than she would be.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“Daenerys,” she said. “You might not have wanted to split our kingdoms, but I’m not about to put the Iron Islands in jeopardy again. Men think with their cocks and egos. My father, may the Drowned God have him, was an idiot. My uncle, an idiot.”

“My father was mad.”

“And Sansa’s was entirely too honorable.” Yara picked up her wine and threw it back, draining the glass. “I don’t know her, but I do know she’s not going to risk the North. That was the whole point of her selling her brother to you, right?”

Dany snorted. “It was an easy manipulation.”

“Still worked. Now, do you think I could sell her mine and get something sweet out of the deal? Establish a trade route?”

A real smile stretched across her face. Yara was crude and reckless and, as she said, a threat. It was nice talking to someone who was maybe not quite a friend, but not an enemy. “All you can do is ask.”

\--

Sansa found herself at the top of a dark stairwell, the stone steps crumbled in places where the attack had destroyed this part of the Red Keep. Dany stood before her, a few steps below, holding a torch aloft.

When the Queen of the Five Kingdoms had requested her presence, Sansa went because it was the polite thing to do. They would be family in a couple of days, and she would not bend the knee. It wasn’t like there was any reason for her to fear Daenerys Targaryen, and yet as she stared into the black maw before her, her heart began to thump painfully in her chest. When she had asked for a walk, Sansa had imagined the gardens she would walk with Margaery. 

Silly.

Dany glanced back at her. “Don’t worry; this part is still intact. I would just watch your step.”

Oh, yes, it was the architecture that made her hesitate. Damn her, showing weakness so easily. Excuses flew to her lips about the tombs beneath Winterfell and the dead clawing, clawing, clawing their way out. 

That just made it worse.

So she swallowed the words and took a deep breath. “When you asked for me to accompany you, I didn’t expect to go on an adventure.” She gathered her skirts in her hands to give her legs freedom and wished she had asked Brienne or Podrick to come along with her. 

“I have something to show you.”

“Down there?”

Foolish. She could hear Littlefinger berating her. She could hear Cersei laughing at her naivety. And still, Sansa walked down each step, chin held high, shoulders back. 

The fire cast an interesting sheen of light across Dany’s face as she looked back again. There was a laugh in her voice, something Sansa hadn’t heard since the last time her and Dany had been alone together. When Dany had wanted to be her friend, and Sansa couldn’t allow her guard down. 

“It’ll make sense, I promise. I figured showing you would be better than telling you.”

The chamber was faintly lit, some of the torches having gone out. A strange wind filled the room, filtering in through the cracks made by the broken stone where part of the room had caved in. It was dark and no less terrifying than the stairs. 

“I can’t say who it was that put the skulls down here,” Dany began, “but I know that Tyrion loved them.”

She led Sansa to a large dragon skull that had somehow managed to survive the attack. Having seen the one remaining dragon in the world, the enormity of this skull was overwhelming. Without thinking, she reached out and touched a tooth that was the length of her entire arm. How old was this? How long had it been here? 

If only she had cared enough about the history of the Red Keep and the Targaryens and any of Tyrion’s interests when she had been a prisoner here. 

“Tyrion loved dragons?” she asked.

“He was surprisingly good with them. Not a Targaryen, but someone who had respect and awe.”

Yes, Sansa could see that about her former husband. “I didn’t love him, if that’s why you brought me down here.”

“I brought you here because this is where I buried him.” Lowering her torch, a spot in the mouth was lit up so that Sansa could see where the stone had been broken and dirt disturbed. Tyrion Lannister’s resting place was inside the mouth of a dragon. “I thought you might want to see where he was.”

Sansa wrapped her arms around herself, hugging tightly. There was a pain in her chest, a sort of grief she hadn’t yet felt for his death. It was her fault, and the pain was as much guilt as it was something else. She didn’t love Tyrion, but she did care for him. He had been kind to her in a world where kindness was weakness. He was not a terrible man. Perhaps not a good one, but he wasn’t terrible.

“This was kind of you,” Sansa told her. 

Dany blinked her large eyes at Sansa, looking almost like a doll. “I don’t know if it was kindness or punishment.”

She stared at his grave a few moments longer. “Thank you.”

Dany hooked her arm through Sansa’s. “I don’t expect us to be friends, but we will be family. I thought perhaps this could be a good step forward.”

It could have been a trap. She was very tired of always having her guard up, but her smile was a lie.

“I can agree to a step forward.”


End file.
